Thorsten kleine Holthaus wins “red dot: best of the best”

With his campaign “Molecular food“, fellow student Thorsten kleine Holthaus recently was awarded the “red dot: best of the best” prize in the categorie advertising (find it on the red dot site under communication design).

I’m not a specialist in the field of food photography, though I think that Thorsten’s work is absolutely remarkable and innovative. Food Styling by René Bastian Stein.

Congratulations!

Here his concept:

The concept of Molecular Gastronomy has been the most influential trend in haute cuisine over the last fifteen years. Inspired by findings in modern science this avant-garde cuisine alters texture and appearance of individual products. The purpose of this campaign is to attract attention to the fictional 65°restaurant that utilizes the potential of Molecular Gastronomy to weave amazing new creations indulging the customer’s senses. The campaign follows the idea of Molecular Gastronomy. The innovative cuisine is promoted combining the concept of irritation and an unusual visual language. Both printed advertisements and the Citylight campaign are divided into two phases that are released consecutively.

Evelyn Hofer dies at the age of 87

In November, large format  photographer Evelyn Hofer died at the age of 87. Though she has the same name I do (and who doesn’t google himself once in a while?) , I haven’t seen her work until this year and was very impressed by some of her portraits. There aren’t that many informations online, i definetely need to have a look at her book she did with Steidl.

Some more pictures here.

Yto Barrada – The smugglers

The exhibition “Dress Codes”at ICP New York showed some interesting photographs, among them a tableau of Yto Barrada called “The belt”  from the series “The smugglers”.

It shows a elderly marrocan woman who smuggles frequently fabrics from Spain to Marroco, hiding the smuggled items under her blue djellaba.  The tableau shows how she looks with and without the smuggled stuff, revealing layer by layer what the djellaba protects. A longer text on this and other exhibited works of “Dress Codes” can be seen here (check also Richard Learoyd with his room sized camera obscura, Lorna Simpson with her photo booth portraits or Hank Willies Thomas series “Unbranded”).

RICHARD LEAROYD

Sigrid Jakob: Bears

Found these photographs of Sigrid Jacob yesterday. Interesting topic, especially as in todays media everything is so much about thin, “convetionally beautiful ” people. Unfortunately, there are only few pictures online.

Her artist statement:

“This body of work has grown out of my interest in how men manage to create authentic identities in a world where masculine ideals are becoming ever more narrow and constrictive. The gay male subculture of bears – men who exalt in their large, hairy bodies – is an interesting mirror to our cultural obsessions. By blatantly defying the beauty ideals of both the straight and gay mainstream, bears have chosen to be outsiders twice over. Instead of hewing to pre-defined notions of masculinity, bears have blended a romanticized blue-collar aesthetic with a warm, inclusive way of interacting. With my images I want to reflect this complex identity, showing my subject’s delight in their bodies, but also the defiance or even melancholia that often accompany this hard-won confidence. As a straight woman who enjoys looking at these bodies my role is an unusual one. We are rarely given permission to look at large bodies, and when we do we are trained to look at them critically. I want to unsettle our viewing habits and make us see them with a lover’s gaze, as deserving of our desire. Ultimately, my goal is to contribute and to expand the ongoing discourse on how men look at men, women look at men and how we look at ourselves – the complexity of what happens when one human being looks at another human being. I find my subjects on bear-specific internet message boards and web sites. I collaborates with them on how they want to be depicted, which means sometimes re-interpreting standard ‘beauty poses’, sometimes coming up with a new visual vocabulary. The resulting images are frequently used by my subjects in internet personals ads and home pages.”

secretsofajewishbaker by jana

My friend Jana who recently moved to Berlin too has a cool blog on art,design,philosophy and whatever comes to her mind. I like it a lot.

secretsofajewishbaker.blogspot.com

No such thing by Joscha Bruckert

There is noch such thing as  bad photograph..For his new proejct, fellow student Joscha Bruckert needs your shitty photographs. Send him some!

http://joschabruckert.de/nosuchthing/

 

Blog recommendation: americansuburbx.com

I have been to this blog earlier but it wasn’t until now that I’ve seen how much interesting interviews, videos and theory sources can be found on www.americansuburbx.com

Amazing blog.

David LaChapelle: new website

..at least I haven’t seen this new one yet. Not quite sure how much I like the new stuff, but I admire him for the great output he had over the years, for his literally fantastic productions and also the other projects he did, like the RIZE film (I unfortunately only saw some parts of it on youtube) or the stage design he did for Elton John (can be found under projects>stage).

The website shows hundreds of pictures and it’s fun to see all the complete editorial shoots he did for Italian Vogue, I-D etc.

I actually came back to his website after I found I really weird editoral David LaChapelle produced for Vogue Hommes, obviously Found Footage photographs from the 70s / 80s with some models/things photoshopped.Very entertaining.

© All photographs David LaChapelle Studio

Adam Bryce (via www.slamxhype.com ) wrote about this work:

“Vogue Homme have just published a series of photographs gathered together by David Lachapelle titled ”The Americans”. Re-opening old family albums from the holiday 4th July, Lachapelle has co ordinated a full volume of images that contain the patriotic pride of the American family which border on debauchery. An aesthetic that differs radically from david Lachapelle’s usual photos that are hyper-stylized, but they still prove to be provocative and disturbing.”

Some more Garry Winogrand videos and quotes

I did a post earlier on Winogrand (here) and everytime I see new videos of him working I am amazed again. He did many great pictures (and some of you might now that I’m hard to please with photo journalism / reportage style – but maybe he was just a documentary photographer?) though maybe even more his attitude, the way he works, the way his passion for photography dominated his life impresses (and shocks!) me most. He did what he had to do, and though it’s not easy to live a life like that it was probably the only way for him.

You find a transcription from both videos via this post at 2point8 blog.

Here are some quotes:

“I don’t lay myself down on the couch to figure out why I’m a photographer and not this or that. Whatever it is, I can’t seem to do enough of it. It’s a pleasure.”

“I think that there isn’t a photograph in the world that has any narrative ability. Any of ‘em. They do not tell stories – they show you what something looks like.”

“The nature of the photographic process – it is about failure. Most everything I do doesn’t quite make it. The failures can be intelligent.”

 

Related to the first Winogrand videos, see also this one of Joel Meyerowitz, with german comment only.

 

Back with Stefania Gurdowa’s glass negatives

Back in Germany! After seeing great photography in Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York my notebook is full of photographer names and my ixus full with exhibition shots. I will try to get some of what I saw and liked onto the blog, but it was sooo much.

Anyways, I’ll start today with something I just found online, not during the trip.

It’s a project I found on lensculture.com, edited by Agniesza Sabor and Andrzej Kramarz. They found about 1000 glass negatives of a photographer called Stefanie Gurdowa (1888-1968) who ran a photographic studio in the 1920s and 30s.

Especially as this technique of preparing and exposing glass negatives doesn’t exist anymore (or is somebody still doing it?), these pictures look very much like a view into the history of photo techique as well as a view into another time, when people were not used to sit in front of a camera.

The accompanying book can be found here at photoeye .