AORTA

So, today I ran into these editorials on 125magazine and I thought they were quite amazing. They are from the Swedish duo AORTA, Marco Grizelj and Kristian Krän, whose trademark is its 'semi-documentary fashion photography'.

I strongly suggest to take a look to their website for some other great works.

Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize 2010

First Place,
Huntress With Buck - David Chanchellor

Second Place,
Portrait of my British Wife - Panayiotis Lamprou

Third Place,

Tic Tac and Toots - Jeffrey Stockbridge

Fourth Place,

Untitled 2 - Abby Trailer-Smith

I have deliberately avoided to write any explanation next to these photographs (sorry if they are so small) because I thought that one must first look at the image itself and its composition, before being ‘distracted’ by its story.

(You can find the description of the winning photographs here).

This exhibition presented very powerful portraits shot in a familiar environment to which the viewer can easily identify. A mix between gifted amateurs, established professionals and photography students have participated to this year’s competition, with nearly 6,000 submissions. Only 60 though have been selected for the final exhibition, which I strongly suggest to go see.

Also, on Thursday and Friday the gallery is open until 21.00 with music and talks, which helps creating a nice and ‘cosy’ environment.

Here are a few other of the ones I liked most, although unfortunately I wasn’t able to find some on internet (one more reason to attend the exhibition).

Hockney and Ruby, Jonathan Root

Tagar with his three daughters: Asa, Diti, Prya, Kurt Hoerbst

Catharina #081, David Knight

Wafa, Felix Carpio

Not even Magic Stopped the Genocide, David Graham

For more informations: Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize 2010
The exhibition will run until February 2011.

Daido Moriyama etc.

In the past few days I had the opportunity to visit a couple of photography exhibitions in my own town Modena, Italy. They were both quite interesting and, to an amateur as I am, inspiring.

One of them is called Make History, a project that had ran last year and had big success, but to which the government has cut funds for this second edition. In fact, it was only present in Modena instead that in many other cities across Europe.

An international contest of photo-reportage, it was open to anyone who wanted to depict through photography an aspect of their own history. Out of 2,400 participants, only 101 have been eventually selected for the final exhibition, of whom one won €25,000 for the best picture (Downdance by a Spanish artist called Leidenfrost).

This particular image wasn’t my favourite, I found others much more provoking and realistic, but this is of course just my mere opinion.
Here are a few others:








The second one was dedicated to Daido Moriyama, an incredibly dark Japanese urban photographer. I don't have much knowledge on Japanese photography, but I must admit this exhibition made me quite interested in it and I will definitely attend some more.

Although I liked some of his photographs more than others - that I didn't find as much compelling - what I liked most was his 'philosophy' behind his work. After some internet research, I arrived to a japanese international online magazine called Shift, where it was quoted what Moriyama said: 'Photographs only capture a moment, but it is an attractive media that connects to others.'

Also, during a recorded interview he stated that all of his works don’t have any specific meaning: instead he makes the viewer finding one. This is great, because I am of the idea that photographic works (as painting and other forms of art) are very much subjective, and that giving them a definition would do nothing but harm the effect they have on the viewer.

Furthermore, he focused on areas and people that perhaps we don’t normally look at, this way forcing us to open our eyes to what is around.
Here are some of the ones I liked most:

And finally, my favorite: