Category: Photography

Toby Keller’s White Series

California and Chiang Mai based photographer and designer Toby Keller has created this quite stunning minimalist series of white photographs. Beautifully executed, the White series is primarily focused on underground car parks and coastal lines, illustrating serenity and spaciousness.

I find there is such a calming effect browsing this series, which is perhaps surprising because in reality, calmness is not exactly something that is typically associated with a car park, for instance. Yet, it is here, which is testament to Keller’s work.

Perhaps equally beautiful and inspiring, is his Black photographic series. Enjoy.

Iceland by Michael Schlegel

Iceland’s landscape in black and white; when photography is not about colours but about emotions. Fierce, stark and ethereal. This is how German photographer Michael Schlegel sees Iceland. An empty, primitive land where the only inhabitants are the elements of nature. The combination of simple frames and high contrasts with the wise choice of shutter speed captures the beauty of the landscape, the wind, the fog and the running waters.

Schlegel’s project “Iceland” won first place in Fine Art/Landscape at the International Photography Awards. His work has been featured among many others in Black & White Magazine, Zoom Magazine and D-La Repubblica. His most recent exhibitions include Sylt & Iceland – Flo Peters Gallery, Germany and Iceland & Australia – Photo Münsingen in Switzerland.

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(un)defined spaces

Matthias Schade was born in 1984 in Berlin, Germany. His latest work is a series of photographs named (un)defined spaces – an investigation of urban space. An investigation of our living environment.

Schade explains the concept behind the series:

Contrary to the daily natural perception of urban space, my artworks of the (un)defined space series offer a directed and focused view on our surroundings. They invite the beholder to critically and consciously face its environment. It is not about a mere documentation of our environment but rather the chance to question things and to create new experiences.

The young artist has been shortlisted for the Celeste Prize 2011 within the photo, digital graphics category back in November 2011.

I love these very minimal and undefined photographs.

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Seascapes

For more than thirty years, Hiroshi Sugimoto has produced series of highly refined black and white photographs. His subjects, which include movie theaters and drive-ins, natural history dioramas, waxworks, and seascapes, provoke fundamental questions about the relationship of photography and time while exploring the mysterious and ineffable nature of reality.

Hiroshi Sugimoto was born in Tokyo in 1948. In 1970 he moved to Los Angeles and studied photography at the Art Center College of Design. Sugimoto lives and works in New York City and Tokyo.

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Pirelli Calendar 2012

With the theme of natural feminine beauty, the 2012 Pirelli Calendar was unveiled this week in New York. This edition features Mario Sorrenti‘s work (the first italian photographer chosen in the history of the 47-year old italian calendar), who deliberately chose to not portray the models in an ‘obviously’ sexy fashion, as claimed by him in an interview for WWD:

Originally I thought I was going to do very sexy pictures, and when we got there I realized that I didn’t want the pictures to be sexy at all.

Faithful to this year’s theme, the images are elegant compositions based on a simple formula: the combined textures of the naked skin, framed and enhanced by the natural elements of the Corsica island. Beautifully minimalistic.

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Rest Days

Luca Sironi is a Milan based photographer and filmmaker who recently completed his conceptual photography project titled Rest Days. The project comprises 24 colour photographs depicting a series of closed shop shutters.

Sironi explains:

The shutters hide what’s inside, becoming apparently identical to each other, and in their repetition, looking more and more like a minimalist series of ordered anonymous headstones.

The photos, taken in the towns of Bussero, Caponago, Carugate, Cernusco soul Naviglio, Gorgonzola and Pessano con Bornago, represent the change over the last 25 years in people’s social habits on Sundays (our typical rest day) in the areas these shops reside. In recent years the result is as if shops have changed their function, becoming symbols of the inhibition that consumerism exercises on spontaneous social aggregation, rather than useful daily facilities.

I love the impact these photos make as a collective.

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Nonspace

Nonspace is a series of photographs by UK-based photographer Emily Grundon. According to Emily:

This work depicts several sites that are all considered to be successful and established exhibition spaces - constructed with the sole intention of displaying works of art. Nonspace not only aims to enhance the architectural quality of simplicity, moreover, it is intended that these observations commend the position of the photograph as a document of something that traditionally leads a relatively invisible existence.

I think they’re beautiful and unassuming.

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Character

Character is a Finnish company that recycles old neon signs, created by designer Aleksi Hautamäki.

Their process consists in choosing the most stylish letters and turning them into individual and unique design objects, and their sustainability is further enhanced by replacing the neon tubes with LEDs. They add a transformer, install a power cord and off the letters go with a new life cycle. You can even buy one online.

Neon signs have this capacity to attract and focus one’s attention, stripping away their surroundings – a single neon letter enhances that effect even more so. In these installations photographed by Johan  Warden, they become minimalist beacons, softly illuminating unexpected new spaces.

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Grijs

Loraine is an Amsterdam-based designer. She is prominently known for her minimalist styling, photography, and also for making beautiful fabric creations – even her packaging is very simple and stripped down to the basics.

Her blog Grijs, with its very simple and clean design, is where she showcases her work, process and inspirations. Even her post titles are reduced to symbols and characters that reflect feelings and thoughts.

For me, navigating her website is always a fresh, calming experience and the virtual equivalent of an open, airy, light-filled room.

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Paper

Paper is a photographic series by Los Angeles-based artist Nicholas Alan Cope. According to his biography, Cope’s most recent work ‘focuses on abstraction and viewer perception’. I think these photographs are strikingly beautiful and reflect sophistication in form and composition.

His work makes me think of the photographic experiments of László Moholy-Nagy, especially his work with light modules, in that they both play with our perception of scale.

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