Photographer David Chancellor‘s series Hunter documents South African big game Hunting. Chancellor explains that while hunting safari’s were once particularly fashionable among the leisure class, the activity has since undergone some changes. Land that had once been dedicated to farming and livestock now serve as big game ranches – a place professional hunters can once again kill for sport. Chancellor captures the complex relationship between hunter and hunted, which is rendered even more complex by modernization. He says that the series is “a long term project documenting human/wildlife conflict in all it’s forms, Hunters explores the complex relationship that exists between man and animal, the hunter and the hunted, as both struggle to adapt to our changing environments.”
Author Archives: Danny Olda
The Cookware Sculptures of Adeela Suleman
The art of Adeela Suleman is built of common cooking utensils found in her home of Karachi, Pakistan. Suleman utilizes objects such as strainers, measuring spoons, tongs, and enamel pots among many others. While many of her pieces appear organic, others seem to be a form of armor or helmet. She juxtaposes traditionally domestic tools with the appearance of items of aggression and physical protection. Perhaps, a reminder of physical abuse directed against women as well as the absurdity of violence.
The Ghostly Portraits of Ana De Orbegoso
Ana de Orbegoso‘s series of photographes, titled The Invisible Wall, is a way of visually depicting personal prejudices. The photographs are a series of portraits each obscured by a pair of hands, as if the subject were hiding their face. Underneath the hands, though, a face subtly appears. Obviously, the series’ title refers to a figurative wall, a social one. Of these ‘walls’ she says:
“Behind our individual walls we each keep hidden our prejudices, our preconceptions, our highest aspirations. Our individual walls serve to protect us by enabling us to always hold something back, an edge between what is hidden and what is revealed.”
The Multi-Perspective Art of Christopher Derek Bruno
The work of artist Christopher Derek Bruno playfully interacts with perspective shifts. Some of his art only comes into a cohesive whole when viewed from a very specific angle. Other pieces have multiple forms depending on where a viewer is standing. In a way, his art uses literal multiple perspectives to comment on multiple social perspectives. As his work changes from one vantage point to another, the reading of any work of art changes with each viewer. In this way one piece becomes several.
Designer Creates a Different Silhouette of His Daughter Every Week
Graphic Design can often get the bad rap of lacking soul or substance. Designer Brent Holloman, however, created a series with heart. When his daughter was born in 2012 he decided to create a new silhouette of her each week. Ranging from illustration to sculpture, each week brings a profile of his little girl. These are a sampling of the many pieces he created. Holloman comments on the series:
“ With the arrival of our first baby girl there is one thing I hear all the time… “They grow up so fast.” So I decided to start a project where I can mark the stages of her growth by doing a silhouette of her each week for her first year (or as long as I can keep it going).”
The Cut Paper City Sculptures of Matthew Picton
The work of Matthew Picton is something more than a map, even something more than a model city. He meticulously builds cities from paper. Each buildings wall is built from a strip of paper leaving its interior empty. In a way his three dimensional maps get at the personality of a city. Speaking about cartography Picton says,
“There is some intrinsic quality to cartography that goes beyond the scientific document – a beauty of form and detail, a record of past times and places, something that lives as a world in which imagination can flow; places to re-visit, places to re-imagine, a world to re-make itself in the imagination.” [via]
Several of his pieces depict cities before and after a natural disaster or war. The charred strips of paper mark burnt or crumbled buildings. Pockets of burnt paper seem more like injuries than a cold record of a past fact.
The Shrunken Cities of Ben Thomas’ Photography
These are not photos of miniatures or models. Rather these are images from photographer Ben Thomas‘ Cityshrinker series and are actual cities around the world. Thomas uses what is called a ’tilt-shift technique’. Among other things, the technique basically corrects the distortion caused by perspective. This correction often has the appearance of miniaturizing the camera’s subject. Thomas’ images present the world as if it were a toy. Some of the world’s largest cities seem to shrink into playful places. The images turn a lighthearted eye onto some of our favorite places. [via]
The Massive Clothes Line Installations of Kaarina Kaikkonen
The installations of Finnish artist Kaarina Kaikkonen are surreally familiar. Her work seems to take the familiar domestic scene of clothes drying on the line to its wonderfully illogical end. It’s easy to get lost day dreaming about the many people that once filled the second-hand clothing. For Kaikkonen, this exercise and her work are intensely personal – her father died in front of her when she was young and the installation became a way of processing her emotions. Indeed, the clothing acts as a kind of physical manifestation of memories for Kaikkonen – sort of the only vestige of a body that otherwise only exists in the mind.
