Hisaji Hara
Saturday, March 17th, 2012 The Japanese photographer has made a series of images meticulously recreating the Balthus paintings of young girls. Relocating the staged scenes to Japan and working in b/w, the photographs have a formal purity rather than the awkwardness of the original paintings. Much is made of the old-fashioned method of multiple exposures Hara uses in the tableaux rather than digital post production, but I think it’s a shame he doesn’t carry that through to silver prints rather than digital archival prints.
His prints are on show at the Michael Hoppen Gallery.
Acne Paper
Monday, March 12th, 2012
Thomas Persson is editor-in-chief and creative director of Acne Paper. Originally from Norway, he has bought a corner of Scandinavia to his East London offices where I found him for a feature in Soma magazine. He was busy preparing to launch the new body issue in NY.
“Fashion is as serious and interesting to us as art, literature, history, philosophy and all the other areas that we present,” says Persson. “Nothing lives in isolation, everything belongs together. The magazine wouldn’t be half as good without the fashion. The fashion brings the ‘now’ and the ‘wow’.”
Click on the right for another photo.
Roksanda Ilincic
Tuesday, December 20th, 2011
Despite this calm image, Roksanda arrived at our Soma shoot a bit ruffled as she was running late. She’s obviously a great designer, but she was also very sweet and arrived on her own, without an entourage, carrying her dress and shoes for the photograph.
She describes how she begins to create a new collection.
“I love drawing, so that is the beginning of many styles. For others, I begin on the stand, draping fabric to create the desired shape. The fabrics are an essential part of the design phase as they are intrinsic in creating the piece.”
Thanks to Lauren Parsons and Yumi Nakada-Dingle.
Annabel Luton
Tuesday, September 6th, 2011
Annabel’s final show at St. Martins was inspired by Mata Hari. Everything in the collection is hand-drawn and hand-dyed using old techniques. She sponged the dye through stencils to create mottled effects and used batik wax dots to hold back colour. She looked at the hand-tinted photographs of Mata Hari for colour reference and the 1931 film starring Greta Garbo.
Here are some images from our shoot for Soma magazine. Styling by Sabrina Henry. Click image right to see more of the shots.
James Blake
Thursday, July 21st, 2011
After his US tour, James has had a busy summer at the festivals and has just been nominated for the Mercury prize. I shot this cover story for Soma Music issue when he played Koko. They spent all afternoon sound checking his set list to get it right. I was surprised it took so long, but the sound was excellent at the gig.
James says that a club can feel like a totally different place every time you play there because it’s the mix of people make the place.
Right click to see more images.
Taryn Simon
Monday, June 6th, 2011
This evening, Taryn Simon introduced A Living Man Declared Dead and Other Chapters at Tate Modern and talked about the ideas behind the portraits and text. Each bloodline required meticulous research and the most difficult to persuade were 2 feuding Brazilian families. The works are presented in a formal way with the text enclosed so that the artist retains control of all the elements. She loves making books and was very passionate about presenting the work in that form – 900 pages.
She was also nice enough to pose for me.
Concrete Islands
Thursday, April 14th, 2011
The group exhibition curated by Elias Redstone for Analix Forever is a contemporary view of utopian architectural projects. Originally designed with weighty social and political values, the buildings now appear in various states of inhabitation and destruction. Photographers Iwan Baan and Frederic Chaubin have included work from Chandigarh, Brasilia and the former USSR. Chaubin’s images of late Soviet era buildings are fantastic.
Chocolate eclairs
Thursday, April 7th, 2011
There is no excuse for breaking street casting for tea and chocolate eclairs, but when it looks like this . . .
Francesca Woodman
Friday, January 7th, 2011
Victoria Miro are showing Francesca Woodman’s photographs until the 22nd.
I would also like to see The Woodmans, C. Scott Willis’ award winning documentary about her family, and the importance of art-making in their lives. Using journals, experimental videos and photographs, he pieces together her life which ended in suicide in 1981 at the age of 22.
PhotoFilm!
Tuesday, February 16th, 2010
In March, Tate Modern roll out a series of programmes which reflects on films structured around the still photograph. They include a conference and films by artists and filmmakers including Thierry Knauff – shown above.
As many photographers are working with moving images now, this should be an interesting discussion on stillness and movement.