After a decade of living in Finland, David Popa has established a fruitful creative collaboration that would be impossible in his native New York City. The artist frequently works on land and sea, particularly the fractured ice floes of the Baltic, to render large-scale portraits and figurative murals that draw connections between the ephemerality of human life and the environment. Whether depicting his wife or newborn child in intimate renderings, he highlights the inevitability of change as time passes, seasons transition, and the climate warms.
Popa’s use of such unconventional canvases emerged from a desire for adventure and child-like play, when he put on a drysuit, climbed onto his paddleboard, and ventured out to a frozen mass. “These spaces were so mysterious and so interesting,” the artist says. “I derived an enormous amount of inspiration from going out into these ethereal spots.” After taking some drone photos of the areas, he began working, spraying the contours of a cheek or lip onto the icy matter.
Left: “Remnants of the Past.” Right: “Prometheus”
Because many of his works are destined to melt and be reabsorbed, Popa opts for natural materials like white chalk from the Champagne region, ochres from France and Italy, and powdered charcoal he makes himself—the latter also plays a small role in purifying the water, leaving it cleaner than the artist found it. Most pieces take between three and six hours to complete, and his work time is dependent on the weather, temperature, and condition of the sea. “The charcoal will sink into the ice and disappear from a very dark shade to a medium shade, so it has to be created very quickly and documented. No to mention the work on the ice will just crack and drift away completely, or the next day it will snow and be completely covered,” he says. “I’m really battling the elements.”
Popa embraces this cyclical process and the lack of control over the fate of his works, which he preserves only through stunning aerial photos. Broadly reflecting themes of existence and time, some of his murals, like “Prometheus” and “Remnants of the Past,” also emphasize shifts in aesthetic impulses. Mimicking Greek sculptures, the works appear “washed up on shore,” drawing connections between antiquity and today and the differences in how we perceive beauty.
Popa will release a new limited-edition print next month, and you can follow that release on his site and Instagram. (via Yatzer)
One of the largest solar energy plants in the scorching deserts of Ibri is also the site of burgeoning childhood curiosity thanks to the French-Swiss artist known as Saype (previously). A commission from the Swiss Embassy in Oman to celebrate the countries’ 50-year partnership, the massive piece of land art spreads across 11,250 square meters of sand. Created with eco-friendly paint in shades of gray, the public work titled “Towards Good Ideas?” depicts a child kneeling at a lightbulb, connecting two switches to rows of solar panels.
Best viewed aerially, the piece took about one year of planning and five days to execute. Saype shares that given the increasingly urgent calls to divest in fossil fuels and find alternatives, he wanted to highlight one area offering a potential solution. He said:
Energy management is certainly one of the major challenges of our overaccelerating world…Being aware that the solution centers around a complex energy mix and in a form of sobriety, I chose to paint this child playing with the magic of solar energy. Looking towards the horizon, he symbolizes the renewal of a civilization that must now reinvent itself without destroying the planet.
An updated mural from the anonymous Italian street artist Blu (previously) sinks its teeth into capitalistic greed and nature’s unparalleled capability for destruction.
Originally painted in 2009 following the Spanish financial crisis of 2008, the first mural likened the insatiable capitalist appetite to that of the aggressive fish, which stretched across a 25-meter section of wall at the intersection of Barcelona’s Carrer del Santuari and Carrer de la Gran Vista. Crews painted over the work in 2021 as part of a city project, and after hearing that neighbors wanted the piece back, Blu painted a second iteration earlier this year.
Retaining the bank-note shark of the 2009 work, the 2023 version adds an arsenal of nuclear missiles and warplanes to the central creature. The expansive mural continues to unfold like an exquisite corpse of global maladies with raging forest fires and floods encroaching on civilization, leaving mass chaos and ruin in their wake.
See the full mural here, and follow Blu’s latest projects on Instagram.
Nothing puts the enormous power of nature into perspective quite like the energy of our planet’s oceans. On a reef off of the North Short of O’ahu, Hawaii, some of the world’s most famously thrilling and dangerous waves present enticing conditions for surfing in an area known as the Banzai Pipeline. Photographer Kevin Krautgartner celebrates the mesmerizing, barrel-shaped breakers in Pipeline, a series of aerial images highlighting the formidable force of water crashing and whorling along the shore.
“Personally, waves always get my attention when I’m close to a coastline or the ocean,” Krautgartner says. “For me, they are especially unique because they are a natural phenomenon that can create a sense of awe and wonder… creating a rhythmic pattern that can be both soothing and exhilarating.” Going beyond documentation, he focuses on details like structure and form, examining the elemental interactions between light, water, and air. Taken from an aerial perspective and devoid of figures or landmarks for scale, he emphasizes how no two moments are the same: “Since nature is in a constant state of change, be it short or long term, each of my works captures a moment that will never happen again.”
Krautgartner recently released Water.Color, a book featuring his aerial photographs of surreal, watery landscapes. Find more of his work on his website, Behance, and on Instagram.
Moments of coincidental humor, stark cruelty, and surprising inter-species intimacies are on full display in this year’s World Nature Photography Awards. The winners of the 2022 competition encompass a vast array of life across six continents, from an elephant’s endearing attempt at camouflage to a crocodile covered in excessively dry mud spurred by drought. While many of the photos highlight natural occurrences, others spotlight the profound impacts humans have on the environment to particularly disastrous results, including Nicolas Remy’s heartbreaking image that shows an Australian fur seal sliced open by a boat propellor.
Find some of the winning photos below, and explore the entire collection on the contest’s site.
In late 2019, Jan Erik Waider boarded the Bark Europa, a 56-meter-long wooden sailing ship constructed in 1911, bound for the Antarctic Peninsula. The Hamburg-based photographer, whose work centers on polar landscapes (previously), captured the multifaceted forms of glaciers and icebergs, steely grays of storms, and shrouds of mist during the 24-day voyage. Waider is known for his documentation of dramatic northern destinations like Iceland, Norway, and Greenland, and a trip to the southern extreme proffered an opportunity to expand on his series of atmospheric vistas with the project A Faint Resemblance.
Antarctica is approximately 98% covered in ice and nearly doubles in size in the winter when the sea freezes around its periphery. In summer, the sheets break up and calve thousands of icebergs, many of which are so vast that they can be measured in square miles. Waider captured the spectral forms of these floating, icy islands as the ship rounded the coastline, drifting through patches of fog that added an extra element of surprise when it cleared to reveal a new scene. “The infinite shapes and textures of icebergs in the polar regions fascinate me again and again,” he says, adding that “the proportions are unimaginable, considering that the largest part is still under water.” Waider is always astonished by the spectrum of the color blue, which on cloudy days can appear even more vibrant, as if glowing from within.
The poles have seen record warmth and ice melt in the past few years, which contributes to rising sea levels and alters the region’s ecosystems. Waider says, “I’m really drawn to landscapes that are transforming or vanishing like icebergs and glaciers. It has a fascinating and also a sad element, and every photo is a snapshot of a moment which is long gone by now.”
Waider is preparing to publish a photo book of more images from his Antarctica trip, emphasizing a holistic interpretation of the continent’s landscape, nature, wildlife, historic sites and the Bark Europa. Find more of his work on his website and Behance.
Catalan artist Javier de Riba (previously) brings the coziness of home outdoors with his ongoing Floors Project. Made possible with the help of the local community, the collaborative endeavor involves painting a specially designed motif onto the concrete or pavers that line walkways and city squares. Each intervention serves several purposes, including adding color to an otherwise gray setting, connecting locals to the artist and each other through art making, and establishing a welcoming gathering space in the midst of an urban environment.
De Riba has completed five of the carpets so far, four in Spain and one in Shenzen, China. He’s traveling to Breda, The Netherlands, this June to collaborate with Blind Walls Gallery on the largest work yet, which will span approximately 400 square feet. Follow updates on the Floors Project on Instagram and Behance, and pick up a print of the vibrant patterns in the artist’s shop.
We use the phrase “to put down roots” to express a desire to make a place our own, whether purchasing a house or deciding to live in one location for many years. A sense of community, family, being surrounded by one’s belongings, and feeling safe and secure all help to form the idea of home, which evokes myriad emotions and associations—especially if any of those fundamentals are missing. In Colombian artist Doris Salcedo’s monumental installation titled “Uprooted” at the Sharjah Biennial 15, the concept remains nebulous.
Salcedo is known for sculptures and installations that incorporate quotidian, domestic objects like tables or garments. Her practice often takes historical events as a starting point, focusing on the effects of major political actions on people’s everyday mental and emotional experiences. “Conveying burdens and conflicts with precise and economical means,” she once cataclysmically cracked the floor of Turbine Hall in London’s Tate Modern and lowered more than 1,500 chairs between two buildings in Istanbul to address displacement caused by war. In “Uprooted,” the theme of migration continues in the form of hundreds of dead trees that have been shaped into the recognizable silhouette of a house, its meticulously constructed walls and pitched roof gradually morphing into a thicket.
Salcedo contemplates transformation and loss that can be interpreted in many ways, especially in the context of Russia’s ongoing assault on Ukraine and the devastating earthquakes in Syria and Turkey that have displaced millions of people. By utilizing trees that are colorless and lifeless, she also references a rupture between humans and nature, examining how our connection to the environment is dissolving.
Visitors can walk around the installation, but the impenetrable tangles of the wood prevent them from going inside. Gnarled roots protrude from all sides, densely clustered trees obscure the entrance, and in place of an inviting front door is a forebodingly dark and impassable juncture between the domestic structure and the wilderness.
“Uprooted” is on view in Sharjah Biennial 15: Thinking Historically in the Present at the recently converted Kalba Ice Factory in Sharjah, United Arab Emirates, through June 11.
Along the streets and canals of Amsterdam, photographer Julie Hrudová (previously) captures daily life through candid snapshots of cyclists hauling unique cargo, pedestrians battling the elements, and canines commuting in style. In her series Chasing Amsterdam, Hrudová focuses on everyday moments and unexpected happenings around the Dutch capital, highlighting the diverse routines of its inhabitants. She has also just begun to experiment with mobile phone videography. “After roaming the streets of Amsterdam, it’s fun to capture the city and other places in a new way,” she says.
Prints from Chasing Amsterdam are available to purchase in Hrudová’s shop. Find more of her work on her website, or follow updates on Instagram.
Functioning as a tourist attraction and essential form of infrastructure, the Golden Gate Bridge is what photographer Jake Ricker refers to as a “strange paradise.” His ongoing series by the same name focuses on the lighthearted, alarming, and sometimes bizarre happenings that occur daily at the orange landmark.
Ricker began the project in September 2017, and he’s since encountered a full spectrum of human emotion and experience during the hours he spends towering over the water. “I have photos of some of the saddest things you can see in this life, as well as some of the happiest,” he told Lens Culture. “I think the bridge exists in extremes.” It’s this vastness that makes Strange Paradise a glimpse into both the mundane and surreal, and the photographs capture everything from marriage proposals and weddings to joggers and commuters to people contemplating ending their lives—Ricker estimates he’s prevented about 60 suicides since beginning the project.
Currently, Ricker has a few prints available in his shop, and you can find more of the series on his site. He’s at work on a Strange Paradise book, and you can follow him on Instagram for updates on its release.
In Simon Schubert’s intricate folded compositions, bars of sunlight dash across door frames, ornate cornicing, and parquet floors in a complex interplay of geometric forms. Relying exclusively on the way light rakes across the surface of paper, the Cologne-based artist meticulously folds single sheets to precisely render the angles and perspectives of architectural interiors.
The artist begins each piece with a sketch, often focusing on mirrored or symmetrical scenes in historic buildings and emphasizing the continuity of long hallways, connecting doors, and reflections. Although Schubert currently centers on the built environment, his first foray into folding the material was an experiment in making a portrait of the Irish novelist Samuel Beckett while the artist was assisting with research into the author’s text and video works at Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. Beckett’s wrinkles were interpreted into creases in the paper, and the artist was fascinated by the idea of drawing without using any traditional materials beyond the paper itself. “The idea was to bring the drawing to a point to where it was almost no longer a drawing,” Schubert says.
Part of a broader artistic practice that explores themes of place, experience, architecture, and imagination, Schubert’s folded paper works translate three-dimensional surroundings into monochromatic reliefs. Subtlety is essential, and there are some surprises lurking, like the ghostly form of a figure who walks up the stairs or an enigmatic shadow that plays against a wall.
Schubert’s work will be part of an exhibition with Foley Gallery in New York later this year, and you can find more of his work on his website and Instagram.
“Untitled (Perspective)” (2021), folded paper, 100 x 70 centimeters
“Untitled (Grand Hall)” (2013), folded paper, 70 x 100 centimeters
“Untitled (Intricated Light)” (2022), folded paper, 50 x 35 centimeters
“Untitled (Intricated 23)” (2018), folded paper, 100 x 70 centimeters
“Untitled (Light in Corridor)” (2020), folded paper, 70 x 50 centimeters
“Untitled (Salon Hanging)” (2010), folded paper, 150 x 150 centimeters
“Untitled (Two Perspectives)” (2022), folded paper, 70 x 50 centimeters
“Untitled (Shadow in Room)” (2021), folded paper, 70 x 50 centimeters
“Untitled (Shadow on Stairs)” (2021), folded paper, 70 x 50 centimeters
“Untitled (Licht in Spiegel und Räumen)” (2023), folded paper, 100 x 70 centimeters
“Portrait of Samuel Beckett,” folded paper, 100 x 70 centimeters
Hovertext: I honestly don't understand why birders are all so happy. It's like constantly rubbing your face in human limitations, and then you don't even get to shoot the source of your suffering.
Dappled with French knots, glinting materials, and pieces of moss, botanical embroideries by Julia Shore replicate the forest floor’s supple textures in fiber and beads. The Los Angeles-based artist also uses hand-dyed velvet, wool, felt, and sequins to add a variety of hues ranging from emerald green to golden yellow. “I tried to capture its intricacy—all the different shades and forms of moss; its soft and calming nature,” she says.
Shore’s next series of moss pieces will be released on Etsy in February. She shares embroidery tutorials on YouTube and has kits and downloadable patterns available for purchase on her website. You can also follow more updates on Instagram.
The natural growth process, which begins with the replication of a single cell and eventually produces bodily systems and lifeforms, informs the practice of artist Toru Kurokawa (previously). Based in Kyoto, Kurokawa transforms amorphous hunks of clay into organic sculptures that bow and bend. The malleable material stretches to reveal pockets of negative space or to generate undulating edges, and once fired, the works appear to freeze those movements. “I would like to create a space that fuses the two things, existence and non-existence,” the artist tells Colossal. “I am conscious of that connection.” Glazed in textured, neutral tones, the resulting forms are abstract and biological, conveying the tension and strength of change.
Kurokawa is currently considering how mathematics and physics can influence the geometries of the works, and you can follow that progress on Instagram.
Since its inception in 2015, submissions to the Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards (previously) have captured some of nature’s most hapless and humorous moments. In this year’s contest, the overall winner was Jennifer Hadley’s timely snap of a 3-month old lion cub tumbling down a tree, taken in the Serengeti, Tanzania. Hadley shared that she and her travel companions had been watching the cub in the tree for some time. “It didn’t even occur to me that he would make a go of getting down by himself in the most un-cat like fashion. I mean, how often do cats fall out of trees?” she says.
In this year’s juried contest, 5,000 entries from 85 countries amounted to fierce competition, showcasing “seriously funny” images in an effort to highlight the diversity of the world’s wildlife and raise awareness of the need for conservation. In partnership with the Whitley Fund for Nature, the contest contributes 10% of revenue toward conservation efforts in countries across the Global South.
See a gallery of all winning images on the competition website, and if you would like to enter your own images for consideration in the 2023 contest, applications are now open.
What makes some photographers return to the same places over and over again? Building their projects around a specific location, this collection of artists share a devotion to observing the rhymes and rhythms of a particular place.
What makes some photographers return to the same places over and over again? Every artist has recurring themes, of course, but for a specific location or scene to imprint itself upon a person’s consciousness, a particular kind of symbiosis must have occurred. The place had to have had an effect on the artist, whether that be visually, emotionally, atmospherically, or something else entirely. What compelled Joel Sternfeld to walk the High Line endlessly in search of pictures? Why did Carrie Mae Weems set up her camera in front of her kitchen table repeatedly across the years? And what made Ed Ruscha methodically photograph every building on the same street?
Photography as a medium has long been associated with the idea of repetition, though perhaps more so for its mechanical aspect—as in, its technically infinite reproducibility—than for any conceptual usage of it. Habit and ritual are huge shaping forces when it comes to artistic process though and many photographers, past and present, have revealed themselves to be creatures of habit, unable to draw themselves away from a particular subject or two, no matter where else their career leads. Looking to the present, the seven contemporary artists this essay centres around all have a place they return to with their cameras, and together they weave a rich web of reasons why.
For Mexico-born, Japan-based photographer Juan Carlos Pinto, that spot takes the form of a small bank of aesthetically pleasing green phone boxes in the basement of Tokyo’s Shinjuku Station—a spot he first came across on a rainy spring afternoon in 2016. “I was on my way to work when I saw the image: it was the first time I saw someone using those phones. I used to pass by that place about three or four times a week, but I had never noticed them before. Suddenly, seeing that person’s wet coat and his hand holding the handset brought the place to life. Without thinking much about the composition I took the photograph and went on my way.” Pinto printed up that photograph as a single image and called it 時代/Jidai - I (which translates to ‘era’). A year or so passed before he thought about it again.
“At first I returned to photograph there because of the appearance of the place,” he recalls. “But over time, the place took on new meanings for me, as each photo I added to the collection seemed to be a chapter of an epistolary conversation in which the social fabric of Tokyo revealed itself.” He started to visit the spot more and more, and some days he would spend up to four hours waiting for someone to use the space.
“Once I find a place where I see aesthetic possibilities I usually explore it for weeks and even months until I manage to take the photograph I am looking for,” he says. With this type of work, the question of when a project like this should finish—if ever—also arises. For Pinto, that time won’t be until the phones disappear. “Perhaps that is the image that will close this series: two empty aluminium pedestals,” he muses. In a way, then, these images of people using the phones form a little time capsule, because most of us now use cell phones and sooner or later public phones may become extinct.
Other photographers are drawn to documenting how a specific place is used in a variety of ways by a variety of people. Two photographers that explore this theme are Tomiyasu Hayahisa, who repeatedly photographed a pingpong table in a public park in his Berlin neighborhood, and Ellen Mitchell, who photographs the benches on the boardwalk of Seaside Heights in New Jersey over and again. Hayahisa’s pictures are always framed the same way—from the vantage point of his apartment window.
“One day, in 2012, I was watching people coming to the table and I thought they were going to play table tennis, but they didn’t. They didn’t play anything—they just sat there and left after a while. From that moment on, I started photographing the people at the table,” he says. And indeed the people in his pictures are seen using the table to lie on, to sit and chat, to skate and so on. Hayahisa has long been interested in a fixed-point-observation style of photographing, he says, which he believes is a way of truly seeing objects and scenes and perceiving their potential.
Mitchell, meanwhile, began her series in 2014, compelled to document this place she’d spent so much time at while growing up. “When I started to shoot at Seaside, I didn’t have an idea of the kind of pictures I wanted to make, but I did know what interested me about the place—the diverse crowds, the architecture, the dichotomy between a very economically depressed populace (it’s consistently one of the poorest towns in the state) and a vibrant beach resort,” she explains.
“I think that, as a local, I can pick out a lot of small details that show what is interesting about the town, but at the same time, I probably miss a lot because I’m so used to seeing it that I’ve become blind to it, in a way.” Some of the impulse behind this act of repetitive photographing is about refreshing her vision anew, then, as well as looking at the characters who use the same spaces as her. “With a uniform format there is a heightened awareness of how the people in each frame differ—in age, gender, race, the endless variety of appearances and behaviours—all of the things that make us fascinating as humans. I think having a similar layout, with the constant of the bench, brings out the beauty and uniqueness of the subjects even more,” she says.
Like Mitchell, San Francisco-based photographer Jake Ricker also became enthralled by a particular public place: this time, the iconic Golden Gate Bridge. Starting in 2017, he began going to the bridge almost every day, staying all day and looking for images. “I thought that the candid, street style of photography that I shoot would be an interesting way to show a different version of such a photographed place,” he says. The resulting pictures capture a spectrum of experience, from tourists’ days out to family embraces, car crashes and cops patrolling.
And then there are the moments not seen too—the 60-odd attempted suicides he helped to prevent simply by being there, watching behaviors and lending an ear. In this way, the ritual of heading back to the same place day after day transcended photography, quickly becoming the work he lived his life around. Ricker says he knows there must be an end to the project eventually, so he is planning on wrapping it up when the suicide-detterent nets that are being installed are finished, which feels like a “natural end” for what the project has become.
Where some photographers head out into the world to find their recurring subjects, others look inwards, unearthing something they keep feeling pulled back to from the substance of their daily lives. Back in 2008, the artist Daniel Blaufuks had been spending an extended amount of time at home due to personal reasons, and there was a certain period where he barely went out at all. During that time, he read and studied a lot—books including Cesare Pavese’s diary and the writings of Georges Perec—and slowly, he started to become inspired by both his own reclusion, and the details of his private space.
“It was as if, as other photographers were travelling further and further afar for their images, I, on the contrary, was retreating more and more,” he recalls. And that’s when he found himself considering a certain window in his home—one with frosted glass that obscured the greenery beyond and cast diffused light across the small table in front of it. “I became interested in the window itself and how it changed daily, as well as how it affected my space differently every time I sat at the table,” he says. To borrow a phrase from the writer Xavier de Maistre, then, this was something of a lesson in how far we can “journey around our rooms”—about the places our minds can take us, inspired by the quietest and most seemingly mundane corners of our dwellings.
Over time, alongside his reading and writing, Blaufuks began photographing the window scene, and, in the pictures, the framing itself never changes. Instead, what differs is only ever the items on the table, the light, and whether the window is open or closed. He called the resulting project Attempting Exhaustion—which speaks to his considerations of whether it’s ever possible to exhaustively photograph a place, or in other words to “describe it fully and completely” he says.
Sometimes, it’s a combination of faces as well as places that photographers return to, as with the British photographer Colin Pantall, whose gorgeously emotive publication Sofa Portraits collects images he has taken across the years of his daughter, Isabel, on their worn-out but much-beloved family sofa. Pantall and his wife used to travel a lot for work before having their daughter, but once she arrived they needed more of a permanent base. They moved into a flat in Bath, UK, and the sofa in question came with the property.
“I was working a lot at home and cared for Isabel when my wife was working, so I started photographing closer to home because that is what I was immersed in,” he explains. “It was an accident to begin with. But by doing so, I began to photograph the same things, to see the rhythms, the slight shifts in light, in mood—in expression and in being—that took place over the course of a day, a week, a month, a year. And that overlapped with having our daughter at home, and watching her shift as she grew from a baby into a young child, a girl, and now a woman.”
Pantall says that photographing Isabel on the sofa repeatedly brought with it different emotional elements. “She watched TV when she was tired; when she came home from school, or a trip to the woods or the park, or when she was sick. She liked someone to be there and that someone would sometimes be me. Sometimes I’d watch with her, sometimes I’d do something else, and sometimes I’d photograph. She inhabited that space physically and emotionally… Over the year or two that I photographed, she visibly grew up on that sofa. And when we left it behind, that’s when the project ended.” In this way, each image in Sofa Portraits is like a little act of care and love; revealing how the camera was there for so many domestic moments, both subtle and significant, as well as how important the sofa itself became as a sort of stage for it all to unfold upon.
Another artist who feels the emotional potential of re-photographing a scene is Deanna Dikeman, whose project Leaving and Waving saw her photograph her parents waving goodbye to her outside of their home as she left after a visit. Beginning in 1991 with an impulse to take a snapshot of them from her car, the project organically became a ritual for Dikeman and would continue on for the next 27 years.
“My photos started as a personal remembrance of family moments, but gradually I realized I had a documentary project that could mean more than my private memories. I was in the process of telling a visual story,” she says. “Could I show how I felt about being a daughter who lived 400 miles away from her parents?” The images are moving beyond words; a catalog of her parents’ soft expressions captured in the same way every time, against the backdrop of their suburban house.
When asked if the work is about taxonomies, Dikeman says, “the series certainly can be considered a taxonomy of family farewells. While I was living the moments, I was only photographing my life and using my photography as a way to soothe my sadness. In retrospect, the series has new meaning for me, and yes, it is a way to review life’s shifts and changes,” she says.
“I can see subtle differences that were invisible in day-to-day (or sometimes year-to-year) life. For example, as they stand side by side in 1992, Dad is taller than Mom. By 2007, he’s the same height. In the last year of his life, Dad is regularly using a cane and later you can see Mom’s hand gripping his arm so he doesn’t fall. In his last photo, he’s leaning on their car for support. My son, who was in the car seat in 1997, is driving the car by 2013. The black dog in 1995 has grey fur in 1998. The wrinkles deepen, the faces sag, the waving hands become arthritic, and time marches on.”
Dikeman’s father was the first to pass away and she remembers after his funeral her mum mildly protested the project continuing. “‘But Mom, we’ve got to keep going,’ I said, wanting the project to continue,” recalls Dikeman. And so she kept waving, and her daughter kept photographing. “I now understood that the goodbye pictures were telling a longer-term story, and I knew that one day I would end the series with an empty driveway,” she says.
So what can be unearthed from a chronological, slowly-shifting photographic portrait of a place and the people in it? The artists gathered together here have told us stories that speak to the power of taxonomies and the poetics of sameness, and together, their works—though different in subject matter and intent—go some way to revealing the hidden aspects of human life that can be uncovered by returning to the same subject day after day, and year after year.
In an empowering new ad from Apple, accessibility features of the brand’s products take center stage. Backed by an energizing soundtrack by Australian ensemble Spinifex Gum that puts famed boxer Muhammad Ali’s 1974 “I am the greatest” speech to music, scenes emphasize the features of phones, watches, and computers that allow people with physical disabilities to access myriad creative and life pursuits: a deaf mother is alerted to her child crying, a performer uses his camera to access the stage door, and a man makes various facial expressions to edit photos. Directed by Kim Gehring, “The Greatest” is a stunningly produced campaign that evinces the powers of greater access to technology for all.
In Courtney Mattison’s elaborate ceramic wall reliefs, the rich textures and hues of coral sweep elegantly across vast surfaces. Made of numerous individual pieces that she forms by hand, each composition references the fragility, diversity, and resilience of marine ecosystems, which she describes as an effort to “visualize climate change.” Currently on display at the Brandywine Museum of Art, “Gyre I” draws inspiration from forces of nature exemplified in the immense power of hurricanes and the delicate spirals of seashells or flower petals.
See “Gyre I” in Fragile Earth through January 8, 2023, and find more of Mattison’s work on her website and Instagram.
The archipelago of Japan consists of more than 6,800 islands, of which around 280 are inhabited, and in a few places, known as neko-shima or “cat islands,” felines vastly outnumber the human residents. Fishing villages like the one on Aoshima, the most well-known of around a dozen cat islands, introduced the creatures in the early 20th century to combat rodent infestations. Their prolific progeny, perched on walls and scampering underfoot, have been a continuous source of fascination for photographer Masayuki Oki.
For the past eight years, Oki has documented clowders of cats in his home city of Tokyo and on islands around the nation, focusing on the feral animals’ interactions. Viewed through a an anthropomorphic lens, the images capture playful pounces and awkward entanglements with humor and a knack for good timing.
You can follow Oki’s feline adventures on his blog and Instagram. He releases annual calendars featuring some of the year’s best photographs, and he also updates a YouTube channel with short videos of furball shenanigans.
By Sasha Korban. All images by Tiku Kobiashvili, courtesy of Tbilisi Mural Fest, shared with permission
For the last four years, Tbilisi Mural Fest has facilitated more than 40 public artworks around the Georgian capitol, and the 2022 event brought a spate of new projects to the city. Given the nation’s proximity to Russia and that country’s groundless war against Ukraine, festival organizers highlighted renowned Ukrainian muralist Sasha Korban who painted a large-scale portrait of a woman in customary clothing facing the Russian embassy. Other works include celebrations of Georgian culture and history, like a large-scale tablecloth with traditional motifs by Chertova Tina and Mohamed l’Ghacham’s dreamlike rendering of the living room of Georgian thinker and author Ilia Chavchavadze.
See some of the 2022 additions below and those from previous years on Instagram.
In this interview we get to know Helena Costa, a veterinarian whose research into whale health has led her all the way to Northern Norway and the Arctic Circle, photographing this breath-taking landscape on film.
In this edition of Making a Moment, Guido Rocatti (aka @ruido) tells us about his trip to Guatemala, a hike to an active volcano, and shares why the experience connected him with his late grandmother.
