Blog

Born in 1991, Natalie O’Moore grew up in the suburbs of Pennsylvania before returning to New York, the place where she was born, to attend New York University. She is graduating with a degree in Photography from the Gallatin School of Individualized Studies. She has since exhibited her work in group shows in Berlin, Germany at the Berlinische Gallerie and in New York. Recently, she exhibited a series of photographs entitled, Under the Neon Lights, which was shown in the Gallatin Arts Festival. She is currently working on a personal documentary project entitled We, Ourself & I that explores the idea of subjectivity within photography. 

Visit her website at: www.natalieomoore.com 

Follow her tumblr at:  www.natalieomoore.tumblr.com

Came across this guy Jason Lazarus’ work & really love it…in a way that I don’t think I’ve ever gotten into “conceptual photography” before (whatever that means). But his work is both sentimental and critical at the same time - curated very nicely. 

The photos I’ve posted are from three different projects - Heinecken Studies, Michael Jackson Memorial Procession, and Nirvana. All are sort of studies on sentimentality, celebrity culture, personal memory, and mortality. 

Highly recommended

http://jasonlazarus.com/home

- S

‘The Ascent’ ©Robert Sky Bradshaw

Slipping Halos is Robert Sky Brandon’s personal vision of heaven, where the American photographer explores what might happen to those who are mistakenly welcomed to His kingdom. In the pictures, heaven is a similar place than our homes here on Earth; with the only difference that everything is covered in white. However, through the series the rooms become progressively tarnished. Red objects make their appearance, for sin follows the ones that do not belong in heaven, and it ultimately surrounds them completely, creating their own personal hell “in the midst of everyone else’s heaven.”

For each picture, Brandon creates a miniature set, which he then proceeds to photograph using the technique of Light Painting (also called Light Writing). The rooms he builds are highly unstable, and between fixing the sets and coming up with the correct light exposure, his shoots can take up to 40 hours.  The end results are images that feel both very familiar and surreal at the same time: they are a promise of rest and peace waiting on the other side, yet they remind the viewers that in this world or the next, “hell could be just a door away.”

-Elena Kendall

                        ’Abandon Hope All Who…’ ©Robert Sky Bradshaw

© Ventosa, Road to Monument Valley

Lately, I have been hearing a lot about this concept called “the New Aesthetic”, and how it is a “collectively intelligent and sharable phenomena”. If you’re not already familiar with the concept, I recommend you read Bruce Sterling’s great article on the matter, where he explains the idea extensively (warning, it’s a very long essay). To sum it up, the way I understand it  “the New Aesthetics” propose a renovated artistic vision distorted through the lens of our computers.

Pep Ventosa is a Catalan artist whose projects are very much so related with this new idea.  His “Collective Snapshot” Series combine dozens and dozens of snapshots of famous landmarks taken by different people and at different times, which have been uploaded to the web. Ventosa then proceeds to superimpose the images together, transforming the final product into a myriad of abstract subtleties. The images acquire a soft and painterly quality, much like a long exposure photograph of a moving object. However, in his projects the perspective has been inverted: it is our society that moves through time and space, and the monument that remains still -a silent witness of the many generations succeeding each other.  Indeed, to the era of digital accumulation corresponds the proper cumulative consciousness, and it seems nothing but appropriate that the “New Aesthetics” should be involved in it. 

-Elena Kendall

© Ventosa, the Eiffel Tower and The London Bus

Following the release of her celebrated memoir Just Kids in 2010, Patti Smith has rebounded as America’s punk-rock idol. The memoir tells the story of the friendship between the artist herself and the photographer Robert Mapplethorpe from the early seventies until his death in 1989. Smith can once again be found on staff recommended and bestseller shelves in bookstores throughout New York City with her latest published work entitled Camera Solo. Camera Solo is a small art book that contains 70 of Smith’s black and white polaroids released by the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art after Smith’s exhibition in 2011. For the most part, the photographs are simple still-lives, taken in intimate settings far from the manic punk scene; they document Smith’s home, her travels, and her closest acquaintances. There is nothing inherently remarkable about the photographs in Camera Solo, but paired alongside her music, poetry, and memoir, these images expose just another side of Patti Smith that we might not have otherwise known.

-Gabriela June Tully Claymore

Read More About the Book and Exhibition Here:

http://www.pattismithcamerasolo.com/

Calling All Photographers!

This year, the New York Photo Festival will take place from May 16^th to May 20^th with a new and exciting initiative:  The New York Photo Festival Invitational! Photographers are invited to submit their work for prizes and the chance to have their photographs and multimedia pieces exhibited at the festival. This is a great opportunity to promote your work so go on and share your vision!

The theme for the contest is: the art/doc matrix: where do fine art and documentary photography meet? 

http://nyph.at/blog

Deadline: this Thursday, April 19^th.

-Elena Kendall

Whether or not you went, your senior prom was undoubtedly a big deal. Even at my too-cool arts high school, senior prom was planned and discussed months in advance. Finding a date was always dramatic; with girls drawing up mental pro/con lists of any boy they would consider and couples spent hundreds of dollars on limos, dresses, and hotel rooms. A bad prom is not just another unfortunate high school memory; it is a night that American society will always remind you of. If you went, the senior prom was either tragic or blissful, and if you stayed home to prove a point, you will always wonder what the night would have been like.

Mary Ellen Mark’s latest photography series Prom documents this euphoric night in thirteen high schools throughout the United States. Mark’s images mimic the traditional format of prom photographs: couples stand together against a backdrop looking either ecstatically happy or absolutely miserable. In contrast with the garishly tacky color prom photos, Mark’s are shot strictly in black and white using a massive 20x24 Polaroid Land Camera. The images have a slightly washed-out and ghostly aesthetic typical of Mark’s past work. Mark has typically photographed people living on the fringes of society, and it is obvious in Prom that she is most drawn to couples that appear out of place either within their surroundings or with one another. These haunting portraits are contrasted with lively, often joyous interviews shot and compiled by the filmmaker Martin Bell (Mark’s husband). In the film, couples and individuals divulge their hopes for the nights, dreams for the future, and feverish anticipation to leave high school.

The Prom photographs are oftentimes uncomfortable to look at, yet there is something familiar about the adolescent awkwardness made obvious by an unforgiving camera. Ironically, the photographs make me sad that I did not take a tacky, posed photo in front of a background covered in airbrushed twinkling stars the night of my senior prom. Whether or not you had a good night, that camera freezes time in its place, making the event appear momentarily blissful. These photographs change the way we remember the night, and Mark’s photographs remind us why, despite its obvious unimportance in the course of a lifetime, the senior prom will always be a big deal.

-Gabriela June Tully Claymore

Mary Ellen Mark’s Prom Trailer:

http://youtu.be/IFDVqDRcNKQ