Kurshaka

Dream Diary, Vaka Valo

Extinction Rebellion, Jamie Hewlett

Swingers, Jillian Denby

Once upon a time in the West, Ken Price

Jeff Widener / AP


Gerard Malie / AFP / Getty


Lloyd Cluff / Corbis via Getty


Rob Stapleton / AP

30 years ago, 1989 (the number, another summer)

Chicago-based artist Reuben Wu (previously) blurs the lines between photography and art in his unique images. Wu’s work brings him to remote locations around the world to capture rugged landscapes. But rather than focusing on purely documenting local topography, Wu uses lighted drones to create geometric shapes in the air, accenting the natural surroundings. Featured here are images from Wu’s Lux Noctis and Aeroglyphs series, showcasing the artist’s interplay of organic and constructed shapes.

“Lux Noctis started as a means to present landscapes in a different way to conventional photography. The use of artificial lighting in a natural landscape came to me at Trona Pinnacles in 2014 when a random truck drove into my time lapse, unexpectedly illuminating the pinnacles in a way that shouldn’t exist,” Wu tells Colossal. “This expanded into the idea of introducing my own look and feel to a landscape using very nuanced aerial lighting. Rather than rely on the sun, and timing, to light my images, I was able to light it myself, like I would in a studio environment.” For his most recent Lux Noctis images, Wu traveled to Bolivia with sponsorship from Phase One, to use the company’s new XT camera platform.

For Aeroglyphs, the artist draws inspiration from the Land Art movement to create interventions without physically touching the earth. Images from the series are currently on view at photo-eye in Santa Fe, New Mexico through November 16, 2019. A catalogue from the show is available for preorder from Kris Graves Projects. Stay up to date with Wu’s new work and travels on Instagram and Facebook.

Blue Monday, Giuseppe Palmisano

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Moon shadow

Fake miniature scenes, Samy Olabi

Poorly Drawn Animals

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Kiki Cahyadi / Anadolu Agency via Getty


Murtadha Sudani / Anadolu Agency via Getty


Anthony Kwan / Getty


Michael Tewelde / AFP / Getty


César Manso/AFP/Getty Images


Thomas Peter / Reuters


Louisa Gouliamaki / AFP / Getty


Salih Baran / Anadolu Agency via Getty

Something happening somewhere

Montreal-based artist Gab Bois uses everyday objects to create photographs that twist reality and illustrate bizarre, yet clever, concepts. Often achieved using post-processing techniques, the seamless images depict unnatural double entendres and impossible feats. For the artist, the ideas are the star and photography is a tool for translation.

Gab Bois has a degree in fine art but didn’t practice photography until after graduating. Finding inspiration in the mundane and random, the common thread in Gab Bois’ work is the familiar. The artist prefers creating from her own imagination and dreams so that the work feels authentic. She tells Colossal that nine times out of ten, she is the model in her photographs. “I like to be very hands-on when it comes to most aspects of my practice and find it very hard to delegate,” she explains. “Being my own subject gives me a sense of control that I wouldn’t have with a model.” She has shot other people on occasion, and Gab Bois says that those were great learning experiences.

Gab Bois’ images live on Instagram, but the artist says that they “aspire to live a much larger life outside of the platform.” She added that Instagram is “a great diffusion tool but it feels reductive to me to have my work reside solely in a virtual environment.” The artist also has a sculptural practice that lives outside of social media.

Gab Bois is working on a solo exhibition for 2020. In the more immediate future, her work will be featured in a group exhibition opening on October 10, 2019 at KK Outlet in London and also in Montreal on October 17, 2019. To see more of her ideas come to life, follow the artist on Instagram.

Times Square, 1983

Darkness on the Edge of Town

“If you think it’s frustrating, it will be. If you think, no problem, it’s not.” -...

Waiting for the end of the world, Augsburger Wunderzeichenbuch

“I feel the serenity in the chaos is what makes India so amazing–the smells, the noise, the heat, the people, the animals,” the Bangalore-based photographer Vivek Prabhakar tells us. “I love going out when the streets are busy. There are so many moments unfolding.”

Prabhakar’s yearning for travel and exploration predates his passion for photography, but his camera helped him fall in love with the streets. He’s documented the hustle and bustle of daily life around the world, but he always return to the cities of India–Old Delhi, Jodhpur, Calcutta, and beyond. Varanasi, in particular, haunts his imagination. Last year, during Diwali, he slipped on some of the city’s moss-covered steps while trying to avoid running into a water buffalo–breaking his ankle in two places. “I surgery and a plate put in my foot, and I was on crutches for four months,” he remembers. “But, even after all this, I couldn’t wait to get back to Varanasi to shoot.”

For the photographer, part of his home country’s magic lies in its history. “Newer cities across the world have a very different vibe,” he admits. “Sometimes they’re clinically clean to a point where it’s predictable.” India, by contrast, always surprises–even in the early morning hours when Prabhakar most loves roaming the streets.

“I love street photography because of all the chaos,” he says. “You don’t control the light, don’t control the subject, or the moment. You have to work really fast to capture that one moment in time. And typically you miss so many moments. But I always tell myself, if I missed shooting that moment, it was never meant to be mine.”

In most ways, Prabhakar is a fly on the wall, capturing the world around him as an outside observer. “I am honestly very quiet while I shoot, and I prefer to be invisible,” he says. “Talking to my subjects is very rare and I feel it breaks the moment. I feel that interacting with my subjects makes them aware of the camera, and it becomes posed.”

Dogs are the exception. Prabhakar has his own dog, named Hugo, and when traveling, he’s drawn to those he finds in the streets. “Dogs are the only subjects I interact with,” he admits. “What I love are their eyes. And all you need to do is whistle and call them and show them some love.”

In turn, dogs have given him some of his most treasured memories, including one from Jama Masjid Mosque in Old Delhi. “There was this person who was sweeping the huge steps leading up to the mosque,” he remembers. “It was early morning with a dark ominous fog in the air. It looked so grim, and in all this grey, there was this stray dog who kept following him up and down. He would stop and sit when the man stopped. It was surreal and lovely.”

All images © Vivek Prabhakar

The post Photos Capture the ‘Serenity and Chaos’ of India appeared first on Feature Shoot.

Secure your own mask first, Hiroshi Watanabe

Andreas Rocha

Angelarium, The Encyclopedia of Angels; Peter Mohrbacher

Walk this way, Vivek Prabhakar

Pastel artist Zaria Forman’s subject of choice is the glacier. The natural phenomenon that occurs around the globe is a critical element of cold-weather ecosystems, as well as a barometer of global climate health. The Brooklyn-based artist travels worldwide, often accompanying scientific expeditions, to experience and document glaciers firsthand, taking thousands of reference photographs to inform her enormous pastel drawings.

In translating her real-world travels on to paper, Forman shares that she draws from memory as well as from her reference photographs. “Occasionally I will re-shape the ice a little, or simplify a busy background to create a balanced composition, but 90% of the time I am depicting the exact scene that I witnessed, because I want to stay true to the landscape that existed at that point in time.”

Forman shares with Colossal that her passion for remote landscapes was sparked in childhood, when she traveled the world with her family—including her fine art photographer mother. As an adult she has channeled this fascination with our planet’s vast and varied landscapes into her art practice.

Climate change is arguably the largest crisis we face as a global society. I feel a responsibility as an artist to address this in my work, especially since I’ve had the rare opportunity to travel to remote places at the forefront of the crisis. Psychology tells us that humans take action and make decisions based on emotion above all else. Studies have shown that art impacts our emotions. I convey the beauty as opposed to the devastation of threatened places in my work. If people can experience the sublimity of these landscapes, perhaps they will be inspired to protect and preserve them.

Many of the works shown here feature Greenland’s glaciers. Last winter, Forman also re-visited Antactica and Patagonia’s southern ice fields, and she has just started working on a series around Perito Moreno Glacier in Argentina. “Impressively, Perito Moreno glacier is the third largest reserve of fresh water on the planet, surpassed only by the Antarctic and Greenland Ice sheets,” Forman explains to Colossal. “It also happens to be the only glacier in the southern ice fields that is not retreating. But it’s not advancing, either. I am excited to dive into its details and textures in these new compositions.”

Next summer, Forman’s solo show will be on view at Winston Wächter Fine Art in Seattle. The artist is also curating an exhibition for the National Geographic Endurance, a polar expedition ship, which will be installed in February, 2020. Follow along with Forman’s work and travels on Instagram.

‘There’s nothing here but what here’s mine’, Karolis Strautniekas

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Gijs Van Vaerenbergh © Matthijs van der Burgt

We get nowhere, it’s been proved.

Willikin Wolf (@WillikinWolf)

Tony the Frosted Flakes tiger sacrificed as a living room rug, wooden dolls handing their babies off to smugglers in freight truck trailers, and welcome mats stitched from life jackets: rather than offering an aspirational lifestyle, one South London storefront window depicts a capitalist dystopia. Created by Banksy and appearing overnight, Gross Domestic Product is the latest installation to critique global society’s major issues of forced human migration, animal exploitation, and the surveillance state.

The temporary installation, which will be on view for two weeks in the Croydon neighborhood, incorporates multiple window displays for a shop that is not in fact open to passersby. However, some of the items on display are available for purchase in GDP’s associated online store including the welcome mats, which Banksy hired refugees in Greek detainment camps to stitch; all proceeds go back to the refugees. Revenue from sales of the doll sets will also support the purchase of a replacement boat for activist Pia Klemp, whose boat was confiscated by the Italian government. The product line is rounded out with such oddities as disco balls made from riot gear helmets, handbags made of bricks, and signed—and partially used—£10 spray paint cans.

Tying this latest project to his larger body of work, Banksy incorporated familiar motifs. The fireplace and stenciled jacquard wallpaper from his Walled Off Hotel, the stab-proof Union Jack vest he created for Stormzy to wear at the Glastonbury Festival, and the Basquiat-inspired ferris wheel that appeared outside the Barbican all appear in GDP.

In a statement about the project, Banksy explains that the impetus behind Gross Domestic Product is a legal battle between the artist and a greeting card company that is contesting the trademark Banksy holds to his art. Lawyer Mark Stephens, who is advising the artist, explains, “Banksy is in a difficult position because he doesn’t produce his own range of shoddy merchandise and the law is quite clear—if the trademark holder is not using the mark then it can be transferred to someone who will.”

Despite this project’s specific goal of selling work in order to allow Banksy to demonstrate the active use of his trademark, the artist clarifies, “I still encourage anyone to copy, borrow, steal and amend my art for amusement, academic research or activism. I just don’t want them to get sole custody of my name.”

Per usual, Banksy shares updates on Instagram, where he claims recent projects, including GDP, which he just announced an hour ago as of press time.

 

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Amazing Banksy exhibition popped up in Croydon. #Banksy #Croydon

A post shared by Matt Hollander (@mhollander38) on Oct 1, 2019 at 12:55am PDT

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Leonardo Santamaria

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Infrared Lake, Paolo Pettigiani