Salt Lakes and Hyenas

I am currently enjoying the first stop on my trip to the Great Salt Lake. Oh Rochester, how you comfort me until you offer vodka and steel reserve…together. I will be in traveling to Chicago to visit David “Chubs, Oh how the mighty have fallen” Oresick who is also part of this blog.

I know this is a link on the Iheartphotograph blog but I think it is such a great idea. So here it is, the scrollable landscape . Anyone can upload photos to be a part of the landscape, but the photos must relate in some way to the previous one posted. What a freaking easy way to have a semi-interesting show. Just get a bunch of people to make your art for you and then print it, done. No, but seriously it is a good idea, i like it.

Here is an interesting photojournalist/fine artist named Pieter Hugo His essay “Gadawan Kura: The Hyena Men” is great. His photos are amazing, but just as amazing is how fucking huge hyenas are!

If you check out his site, you should definitely read the text that accompanies this series. Here is a particularly hilarious/informative excerpt:

 

“I agreed to travel with the animal wranglers to Kanu in the northern part of the country. One of them set out to negotiate a fare with a taxi driver; everyone else, including myself and the hyenas, monkeys and rock pythons, hid in the bushes. When their companion signalled that he had agreed on a fare, the motley troupe of humans and animals leapt out from behind the bushes and jumped into the vehicle. The taxi driver was completely horrified. I sat upfront with a monkey and the driver. He drove like an absolute maniac. At one stage the monkey was terrified by his driving. It grabbed hold of my leg and stared into my eyes. I could see its fear.”

He also has other pictures that are pretty, and about something as well, so it’s like twice the goodness.

 

Regarding The Girl in the Red Dress

I don’t have to much to add except I agree the Helsinki school is pretty amazing. In Fact it gave us this woman who took my favorite photo of a girl in a green field wearing a red dress Ms. Elina Brotherus.

Good God

People are really good at photography, especially people from the Helsinki School:

Anni Leppala:

Maarit Hohteri:

Jari Silomaki: One of my personal fav’s, also go to www.jarisilomaki.com

Sanna Kannisto:

This just in: apparently I love foliage. Anyway, there is absolutely tons of good work on the site, and not all of it features greenery.

But on the subject of greenery, I’d like to talk about “The Girl in the Red Dress in the Green Field” photographs. You know you’ve seen them, and if not, here are just a few examples.

Izima Kaoru: These were in the “Picturing Eden” show at the George Eastman House.

Annie Collinge:

Here is a film still from a movie called “The Girl in Red” by Hannu Jarjalainen:

Juha Nenonen:

I am intrigued by this motif. Where did it come from? What does it evoke? Why are so many young photographers using it? Why on earth would you use it again after seeing it…wait a minute!

Well it’s not a girl, and it’s not exactly a dress, but it’s close enough. I plead guilty to the charge of motif recycling. So green is passive, red is passion. A small amount of red in a large amount of green, often with a debilitated or dead looking person in the red. It seems to me that we are pretty scared that this big world is going to swallow us whole, but that is just one man’s opinion. What do you think? (Chubs, since you are the only person who knows this blog exists right now I guess you have to answer.) I’ll leave you with “Christina’s World” by Andrew Wyeth: By the way this is from 1948!

First Post, interesting links:

Just read a pretty interesting interview with Wolfgang Tillmans here.

“Is it not that you want to present your pictures unadorned and directly?

No, for me it was maximum purity and this most simple of presentational forms was about directness of content as well as the vibrancy of a complex image on a simple piece of photograph paper. It’s rarely mentioned that these details can represent different even opposite things. But that’s largely a semantic problem for me. Language looks for absolute clarity where art is often about graduations.”

Also found a few cool artists/photographers recently.

Brad Phillips: I think this guy is Hilarious

“If I had a Pseudonym”

Melanie Schiff :

Both of these artists have a sense of humor that I really like. It’s nice to see a lighthearted but still intelligent approach to art. I like the way Melanie Schiff seems to be poking fun at the art process and the idea of being an artist. Lot’s of beer bottles and cd cases, dirty rooms, and old hipster shirts.