All posts filed under: Photography

Creating ambiguous realities: Luisa Azevedo

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I have to admit, it has never been easier to search and find beautiful things that spark my imagination. However sceptical we might be about it, Instagram is a real treat for those following the movers and shakers in the creative community. So this is one of my most recent sightings. Even though she doesn’t really like to consider herself an artist per se, Luisa Azevedo is a bright, young Portuguese photographer, instagrammer and collagist from Covilhã with a ton of creativity up her sleeve. Curious, playful and boasting a glaring love for the sea, she captures the sun-kissed moments she comes across on the Atlantic coast and wittily blends them into grand compositions that certainly makes you look not once but twice. Check out her work below & follow her adventures via instagram over here.                

Verónica Losantos: Screen Memories

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When I grew up, my dad’s been following us with his faithful Canon AE-1 at every turn. The first smiles, the first steps, the first time sitting on Santa’s lap, mad birthday parties or my first day at school, you name it. But suddenly, things change. These important occasions become rarer, we begin to overlook the small moments and the gaps between collected memories in my parents’ photo books are getting bigger and bigger. Until there’s only blank pages left. Now, with literally everyone able to keep hold of the things we experience day in, day out with our smartphones, our lives are more documented than ever. There’s all the meaningful moments we keep safe in our hearts as well as those we would instantly forget and never revisit, if we wouldn’t have the technology at hand. But what happens if you never had the luxury of someone documenting your dearest memories with families and friends? What if there’s not a timeline from infancy to teenage years you can simply look back at? Photographer Verónica Losantos can …

Haunting monoliths of magnetic tape | The “V”HS Project

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Over the years, the hunger for new technology has relentlessly thwarted one or another beloved everyday gadget we couldn’t imagine living without. While vinyl records made a miraculous return to strength, things that once reigned our living room shelves for a heartfelt eternity – music cassettes, polaroid films, Super-8 or VHS tapes – were reduced to mere nostalgia by the hands of their successors.  Meanwhile the French mixed-media artist Philip Ob Rey has dusted off the good old magnetic tapes in style to turn his fantastic “V”HS project into a piece of social and environmental critique. His dark and brooding monoliths, created in collaboration with painter Louie Otesanek and photographer Mailie Viney, walk the frozen Icelandic vastness, clad in old VHS film-rolls, stones, feathers, shells or dry seaweeds with one single purpose: Questioning the global tech craze, the overconsumption of new technologies and consequently the unstoppable plastic pollution of the Earth. With the use of a doomed technology that humanity has inevitably forgotten, Ob Rey wants to remind humanity of the mortality of its existence, …

The Monsters By My Side: Lucas Beaufort

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If you’re into surfing, snowboarding or skateboarding, you might’ve come across one or two of Lucas Beaufort’s rad artworks. Be it for magazine covers, photo series, ads or even whole board graphic series, the French illustrator and painter bursts in on the scene with his acrylic drawings of edgy, colourful monster characters. And as they’re peering out of a window, lurking in a sewer tunnel, drinking beers, having fun and cheering the riders on, he gives the rough, jaw-dropping shots a twist of humour and weirdness that surely leaves you with a big fat grin on your face. While the artist draws inspiration from his dreams and particularly his nightmares, not every stunning photo he finds fits his painting makeovers. It’s not so much the action or the trick that he looks for, but all the elements that make up a great piece of photography. So before he experiments with the canvas and lets them creep right into the open, Lucas makes sure his monster brigades have enough space to hang out and support the cover boy/girl in their own, adorable way. Astonishingly, …

Spot On | Emma Abad

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For some reason, I’ve never featured someone on here who’s (predominantly) working with collages. Well, every streak has to come to an end some day. May I introduce? This is Emma Abad. She’s a mixed media artist and Jersey native, who grabbed my attention by, well, just being awesome on my instagram feed. Her work merges photography, illustration and watercolours in beautiful image manipulations that seek to explore the relationships of identity and narratives encompassing our lives. “I’m forever influenced by narrative art. Creative stories without explanations or consequences that build self-discovery and awareness is an ever-growing process for me. There is a desire to always find an answer to a problem.” Indeed, there’s something incredibly mysterious, soothing and adventurous about her dreamy collages that resonates in between the layers and makes me want to play detective, uncover and suss out the hidden story fragments. Check it out, it’s pretty rad!               Check out more of her artworks & get in touch via social media. Emma Abad @Twitter @Instagram @Facebook

Spot On | The Pixel Trade

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A warm bed, a hearty dish and a flight ticket to Marrakech for a stack of beautiful food photography. Sounds almost too good to be true? Well, that’s pretty much how it works if your name is Shantanu Starick. Dreaming of traveling to the world’s 7 continents, dissatisfied and constantly questioning how the creative industries worked, the Australian photographer dared to brush aside old principles and fight his constant struggle between work exposure, financial income and creative fulfilment. So by June 2012 he set up Pixel Trade and started offering his professional work in exchange for life’s simplest necessities – a place to stay, something to eat & the means to get to the next place without spending a single dime. And it seems to have been quite a smooth ride: From photographing weddings in California, artisan knife makers in Ireland, adventurers in the Ecuadorian jungle right up to ice cream makers in South Australia, Shantanu has been up to the task, experienced much and paid nil. Now in his 41st month and 222 trades later, he has now …

A Thousand Dawns – Cycling the Earth by Bike

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Here’s a short adventure feature I did for TMRW the other day & because it’s such a fab project, I had to just share it over here, too. Enjoy the ride and help make it happen! I don’t know about you, but there’s something that never gets old about Kickstarter projects. It’s the heart and soul it takes to bring an exciting idea to life with the help of others. And there’s countless causes I’d love to throw my money at just because they’re so darn clever. Rob Lutter’s ‘A Thousand Dawns’ is one of those inspiring endeavours I’d love to see bearing fruit. “In London, before this all began, I had lost my way. But, a journey that began as escape grew into a meaningful, emotional project based around creativity and charity. My dream ever since has been to share the story and the photography with others around the world: those in search of adventure or change or those who just love to dream and wonder, explore and ride free.” After a tremendous adventure …

© Matiinu Ramadhan

Creative Findings #2: Of nature myths, wanderlust, empowerment & creators

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So there we are. Time for another bunch of creative gemstones I loved reading about and marvel at over the last few days. Maybe you’ll love em, too? Mighty mountain ridges have fascinated photographer Charles Emerson since his early childhood & I suppose he happily embraced the offer to travel the world and create such an impressive photo essay for Intelligent Life Magazine. The online release of ‘Myth and Mountains’ has now been launched by the good folk at Bristol’s Antlers Gallery and features breath-taking shots that literally look like impressionist paintings. Fab work! We all probably know him by the name of Walter Jr. And after his breakthrough role in cult series Breaking Bad, RJ Mitte’s career as an actor and producer has taken off big time. In the latest issue of Schön Mag, he talks about how he uses his media fame to turn his own disability into a voice of empowerment for others. Read it here via ReadBug. Oh, and no spoilers, promised! For someone like me who has worked with magazines before & tries …

Nomad Adventures: How Far From Home

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* Adventure * Travel * Photography * Instagram If you’re eagerly ticking all of these boxes, there’s a chance you’ve come across Chanel Cartell & Stevo Dirnberger’s free-spirited project ‘How Far From Home’. Good for you, it’s ace. All of you, who haven’t, heads up! Over the past 15 years altogether, the couple from Johannesburg worked in creative advertising and branding industries and enjoyed what you might call ‘the good life’: family, friends, great and steady jobs, shiny cars and a beautiful home. However, their lives seemed to have navigated them into a dead end. Everything felt a little too set, a little too perfect, with too much routine and too little challenge. So they decided to sell everything they own, set out into the big world out there, seek the adventure and fuel their creative needs. Or to make it short: Two creatives. One wanderlist. Zero reasons to stay home. And because they can’t just live off their adventures & experiences alone, Chanel and Stevo signed up for Workaway, which allows nomads like them to stay …

In Search of Perspectives: Tobias König

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It’s maybe 6 years ago in a dusty skate park underneath a motorway bridge. The weather’s horrible. The rain’s pouring down and a bunch of young guns gather to seek shelter from the rain and do a few tricks. And there’s this guy clicking away with his camera, even though that was probably before Tobias König started taking stunning photos like those below – bleak and moody b/w pictures that beautifully capture his love for architecture, structures, geometric shapes as well as atmospheric portraiture. So we know each other for a while now and it seems kinda odd to do this interview, 100s of miles apart via email and in a different language. But oh well, here’s us talking briefly about his photography beginnings, spontaneity and his first public exhibitions! Hello Mr. T! Thanks for taking the time to have a chat. Well, I’m quite familiar with it, but do you mind introducing yourself briefly to everyone else out there? Hey, my name is Tobias König, a self-taught photographer. I am 25 years old and …