All posts filed under: Photography

‘Something Manly’ by Stewart Bryden

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With the gender equality movement gathering support from all ends of our society, tackling misogyny and everyday sexism, it’s almost as important to turn our attention towards female roles as it is to question our general perception of men in the modern world: What’s considered manly today? Have we already pushed boundaries far enough and hurdled the last remaining features of a once patriarchal society dominated by men? The first ever stand-alone exhibition by Scottish photographer Stewart Bryden takes a similar line, exploring the visual aspects of a changing manhood, playing on the idea that there’s not only one type but a great variety blurring the borders between the masculine and powerful and the sensitive and insightful. A former assistant to NY artist and photographer Ryan McGinley and collaborating with major brands and agencies like Reiss or Dr. Martens, ‘Something Manly’ brings together a selection of his portraits and commissions, including shots of photographer David Eustace, soul singer Charles Bradley or model Chris John Millington. On that note: Tucked away in between men’s grooming essentials, …

On The Bookshelf: Our Time by Cat Garcia

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‘The underpinnings of genius are always invisible: no matter how hard you look, you can never see the strings.’ This sentence instantly caught my eye when I flicked through the intro of ‘Our Time’ and is probably one of the most canny and truthful statements about perceiving and valuing creativity I’ve read in a long time. London-based photographer Cat Garcia released this heavy bible of creative inspiration already a year ago and after vanishing entirely from my mind, I couldn’t be happier that my better half remembered and caught me unaware with it for my last birthday! And even though I’ve only finished reading through maybe 50% of its content, it’s due time to feature this beautiful thing on my bookshelf. For ‘Our Time’, Garcia set out to portray Britain’s 60 most creative people over the course of one year, following them into their homes and studios, observing their daily work routine, the process of designing and crafting, then again encountering and carving out the human being itself, detached from the artist’s persona. Printed on tactile, uncoated paper, her wonderful, classy and predominantly b/w photographs …

Rube Goldberg Coffee Machine © Dina Belenko

For the Avid Explorer: Dina Belenko’s Still Lifes

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Oh, those happy childhood memories! From an early age I’ve been an explorer, fascinated by the ways the world works, devoured books and binge-watched every documentary I could get my hands on back then – natural phenomena, technical inventions or the outer space, you name it – it seems almost odd that I never wound up in any of these fields professionally. For me it’s always been (and still is) a sweet feeling to conceive and refine a concept, to puzzle over an idea, to disassemble and put it together again, to struggle, despair and eventually succeed, seeing a project grow and turn into something amazing even if you’re the only one who treasures the effort on your way to an accomplishment. That’s probably where my enthusiasm and curiosity for art derives from: The chance to embark on a visual journey and immerse myself in somebody’s idea of the world. And exactly this gripping joy of imagining and (re)-discovering somehow slumbers in the witty still life works of fine art photographer Dina Belenko. At the very heart …

Travelling the Globe one Postcard at a Time: Q&A with Gizem Kuzu

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I just can’t get enough of creative people and their clever ideas. Another small, cute and thoughtful project I wanted to make a dash at is ‘Postcards Beyond’ by Turkish art student Gizem Kuzu, which is none other than a lifetime venture in the making. To some extend, her project reminded me a bit of this guy, who plans to meet each and every of his 1000+ virtual facebook friends for a coffee and have a proper conversation in real life. Other than getting in touch with people she (somehow) knows through social networks, Gizem’s idea is to send a postcard to at least every region in the world, build relationships the old-fashioned way by reminding people how special it is to get something physical from someone you’ve never met before: ‘We’re living in an age of technology and that’s great but what are we going to give our grandkids? My father gave me his stamp collection and wanted me to continue and I’ve turned this to something else.’ But before I bubble over with …

© Julien Coquentin

‘Black Seasons’ by Julien Coquentin

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Sometimes it just happens without knowing and I find myself dwelling around a website longer than I would care for. Facebook, twitter, pinterest or vimeo. Oh, and let’s not forget adobe’s artistic brainchild behance. The nosy creative connoisseur inside me simply loves to browse the hell out of it. Just hit ‘Most Appreciated’, pick a creative category of your choice and you’ll probably get your mind blown pretty quickly. Sometimes I happen to find a heap of really outstanding projects in a matter of minutes that way, another day it’s only one or two decent ones in half an hour of skimming through a seemingly never ending list of visual overload. Anyhow, last night I made a strike. After just about 4 swift minutes and sifting through maybe 15 other (similarly promising) projects, my cursor bumped into Julien Coquentin’s intriguing work. To be honest, the fifth and most recent chapter of his ‘Black Seasons’ series tops off probably one of the most atmospheric photographic showcases I’ve seen for quite a while. Moving along snowy roads, …

Converge: Mark Salmon x Column Arts Agency

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Normally I’d refrain from praising myself, and this is definitely not the time to challenge old habits. Though in this case, it was probably my humble self that played a tiny part in bringing both sides to the table for photography-design-fusion project ‘Converge’. A few months ago, a tweet from Will Astbury’s Column Arts Agency – who already mounted the incredible ‘Triple Hop’ exhibition together with Test Space & Honest Brew – turned up in my twitter feed, hunting for a Birmingham-based photographer. My first idea was Mark Salmon, who recently collaborated with me for a story in The Quarterly, so I gladly put down his name for the raffle. Apparently, it did work out quite well. For ‘Converge’, which has been commissioned for annual visual arts festival Eye Candy, Mark teamed up with Birmingham Royal Ballet dancers Celine Gittens, Kit Holder and Anna Monleon to produce some really sweet live-action shots. Column Arts in turn send off an ace selection of their represented artists, including Trou, Joshua Billingham, Sweaty Eskimo, Laura Tinald, Joel Millerchip or Guy McKinley, to run riot on Mark’s images and add their very …

Traces of the Past: ‘Shot at Dawn’ by Chloe Dewe Mathews

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The dawning of a new day. A forsaken, leafless tree stands guard before a field covered in thick fog. Silence. Not a soul to be seen. If you had no clue of the delicate topic that Chloe Dewe Mathews addresses with her most recent photographic series ‘Shot at Dawn’, you could easily mistake it for just a great selection of beautiful, gloomy landscape photography. In fact, there’s more to it behind the peaceful façade, best visualised by an ambiguous title choice that metaphorically addresses a covert truth: The unadorned presence of warfare. While the London-based photographer aims into the forlorn distance through her lense, waiting for the right moment and eventually releasing her trigger to take the shot, the perspective has probably been exactly the same a hundred years ago, yet facing a group of soldiers pointing their deadly rifles at a convicted brother-in-arms. ‘Shot at Dawn’ narrates the forgotten, repressed or long-lost stories of the hundreds of French, British and Belgian soldiers, who were shot for cowardice or desertion in the dark days of World …

Luminescent Neon Portraits by Hid Saib

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We’ve seen some remarkable portrait photography in almost every imaginable facet, form and variation. Brazilian photographer Hid Saib however treads a truly electrifying path far from the norm, delving into the medium of neon paint for his most recent project. Fusing the mysterious with the animally, the enticing with the svelte, ‘Neon’ (2013) and follow-up series ‘Neonzinhos’ (2014) create a bold showcase of glittering aesthetics that simply left me with a gaping mouth. Ace. ‘I wanted to figure out how to translate each emotion into an almost cosmic visual—an entire world in itself. There was an immediate need to see through the smokescreen we use to shield ourselves. You could say that seeing these unseasonal shades of neon set off a trigger. Colours and expressions, two unadulterated truths, became one in my head.’ (Hid Saib) Check out these links for more of his works. Hidsaib.com Facebook instagram

© Sergej Vutuc

Into the Wastelands: Interview with Sergej Vutuc

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Up until a friend from Hamburg told me about an exhibition called ‘As something could be…’ a few weeks ago, I had practically no clue who photographer Sergej Vutuc is. Outright intrigued and eagerly browsing the web for his portfolio, my eyes fixated on the stunningly disturbing b/w shots he brought back from his trip to Japan. Fukushima, to be more precise. So I dropped him a line if he wants to do an interview for Wildland Mag. He was instantly hooked. After a lengthy back and forth between Scotland, Germany and the US (where he’s currently residing) we eventually pulled off an exciting Q&A that gives a short glimpse into Sergej’s upbringings, the way he understands and lives photography, the DIY culture, skateboarding and his fearless journey to the wastelands around Fukushima on the hunt for crazy spots. Hello Sergej, let’s start with a small introduction. Tell us a bit about yourself and how would you describe your photographic work? Well, it’s always the hardest thing to talk about yourself. I was born in …

The King’s Peace: Realism and War @ Stills Photography

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Of late, the topic of war is unfortunately as present as ever. It almost feels as if there’s nothing else the media is reporting about. Whether it’s the Ukraine crisis, the Syrian Civil War, the struggle for supremacy in Iraq or the Gaza conflict. It makes us realize again and again that visual media is a powerful tool, which easily influences how we perceive a situation of conflict, threat and peace. Do we only get to see the Palestinian suffering or do we just close our eyes from the countless Hamas rocket attacks on Israel on the daily broadcast? Do we buy Israel’s repeated self-defence claims or is the grueling seizure of Gaza and its horrendous attacks on civilians an act of war crime? True or false, it is a matter of perspective. As part of this year’s Edinburgh Art Festival and the nationwide GENERATION programme, ‘The King’s Peace: Realism and War’ at Stills Photography questions the illusion of reality so easily achieved through the camera lens. Initially centered around Owen Logan’s brilliant photo-essay ‘Masquerade: Michael Jackson alive in …