We first spotted these gorgeous, colorized lantern slides by photographer Asahel Curtis on NPR’s blog. The Minnesota-born artist first picked up a camera when his family moved the teenager to Seattle in the late 1800s. In the 1920s, Curtis was commissioned by the Washington State Department of Conservation and Development to shoot a series of slides (hand-colored) that would be used to promote tourism and immigration to the Pacific Northwest area. The stunning landscape images now belong to the Washington State Archives, and we’ve shared a selection of them past the break. The photos have a surreal, dreamlike quality to them. Pictures of apples look like something from Snow White, and the Douglas firs receding into darkness could easily be a still from David Lynch’s Twin Peaks. Click through for a better look.
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London-based photographer Ray Lewis was asked by Requiem for a Dream director Darren Aronofsky to aim his camera behind the scenes of the filmmaker’s most recent movie, Black Swan. The tale of an obsessive and psychologically tormented ballerina in her quest for perfection was the perfect fodder for a series of compelling images captured by Lewis’ lens. They’re quiet moments, but filled with the same expressionistic intensity the final product delivered. Apart from stars Natalie Portman, Mila Kunis, and Vincent Cassel, Lewis was able to photograph the filmmaker and his crew at work. And is that a glimpse of Portman’s dance double — you know, the same woman who tried to bash the Garden State actress, claiming she was taking credit for scenes that featured the professional ballerina? Take a peek in our gallery below.
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Photographer Viktoria Sorochinski began this project in 2005, when the young 23-year-old mother and the 3-year-old daughter’s bond was most dramatic. “It was often hard to tell who held the power and control between the two, and who was learning the essence of being a human in this world,” she writes. So, she brought out the co-dependent and child-like nature of both through folk tale-influenced, phantasmagoric scenes. As time passed, both grew and the young child drifted off into an imaginary world of her own. The dynamics of this changing relationship come to life in a beautiful series Anna & Eve, currently on view through February 25 at the Courtesy Catherine Edelman Gallery in Chicago. See the series in our slideshow — part documentary, part enchanted family album.
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Manchester’s Hulme Hippodrome is a crumbling beauty hidden within an unassuming, modern facade. Inside, the theater’s Rococo touches, cracked plaster, and plush, red velvet speaks of a bygone era when talent was still required to hit the stage and variety performances were the talk of the town. The Hippodrome saw the likes of comedic duo Laurel and Hardy, Nina Simone, and many other famous faces since its opening in 1901. The decadently decorated musical venue has been deserted since the ’80s, though there are recent efforts to restore the largely abandoned spot.
Luckily photographer Andrew Brooks has been able to capture the theater in all its decomposing glory. His camera is like a ghost, peering beyond darkened stairways, invisible in the shadows. The fisheye perspective he employs contributes to the already eerie, dreamlike quality in each image. The artist teamed up with writer Hayley Flynn to document their city’s forgotten spaces, ravaged by time. Flynn shares stories about each location on her blog, the histories of which are fascinating. Explore the haunting Hippodrome in our gallery past the break.
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We’ve seen the whole self-portraits by a talented makeup artist thing before. But unlike Andy Alcala’s face painting odes to famous works of art, which was all about the power of transformation, this series of photos Nadia Wicker embraces the beauty that can be found in the abstract. Shooting her closeup images against a black backdrop and using colored lights, the France-based artist presents the viewer with a face that looks like it has been created out of swirling fireworks. Do we have any idea what she actually looks like? Not really. And that’s precisely the point.
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Just in time for New York Fashion Week, Juergen Teller, the German-born photographer most known for his cheeky refusal to keep his ad campaigns for designers like Helmut Lang, Yves Saint Laurent, Vivienne Westwood, and Marc Jacobs distinct from his most intimate, non-commissioned images, has an exciting new show opening at Lehmann Maupin. “I don’t really see it as commercial work when I do commercial work,” he has explained. “I see it more like… Let’s say somebody wants to do an independent film, right? They have to cast actresses and choose locations and all that. So I’m just using this stuff to create my own fantasies and dreams.”
The exhibition gives a prime sample of Teller’s no-holds-barred approach to picture-taking, which at times has lent his work an air of contention. Divided into three groups, the first series of Teller’s show features alluring portraits of Vivienne Westwood (wearing nothing but her fiery red mane) and photos of model Kristen McMenamy, which were controversial for their purportedly “pornographic” quality. The second set, Men and Women, depicts what some see as representations of the stages of masculinity — from coming-of-age to loss of virility — as contrasted with female power. The third grouping, Keys to the House, features intimate shots of friends and family as well as landscape photos taken at Teller’s home in Suffolk, UK. Click through our slideshow for a sample of photos from this bold, racy, and beautiful show.
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You’ve probably seen Jonathan May’s subjects in films like Killing Zoe or Heat. The photographer’s archetypal characters illustrate a bank robbery in his Heist series, which explores villainy and innocence in alter ego-style portraits. The images are shot head-on, showing how one’s calm and neutral demeanor can quickly transform into something aggressive or fearful. Of course, May’s portraits are humorous caricatures, complete with pantyhose masks, streaming eyeliner, and snarling grimaces galore. See May’s good versus evil accost below.
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Because of our tendency to anthropomorphize dogs and cats, whenever we spot someone’s pet hanging out in a window, we always imagine that it’s anxiously awaiting the return of its owner — you know, as opposed to just chilling out in a comfortable roost. Perhaps that’s why we find the images in Fishbowl, a series by San Diego-based graphic designer and photographer Rachel Bellinsky, so compelling in spite of the relative simplicity of the concept.
“You would not believe how many of these shots I see and miss because I don’t have my camera,” she told Feature Shoot. “The other day I saw a tiny kitten hanging from the curtains as I passed by, and my lack of camera at that moment was criminal. There is an animal in nearly every window of my neighborhood.” Click through for a selection of photos from the series, and visit Bellinsky’s Flickr page to view the entire project.
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Enigmatic photographer known only as The Turk conceptualizes what happens when a group of forgotten, rejected carnies insist that the show must go on. The Salbatar Circus series features dramatically staged “elephantine women,” “scarlet harlots,” “pathetic jugglers,” “potbellied acrobats,” and other outcasts who seem to be frozen in time, playing to an imaginary audience and waiting for the final curtain call that never comes. Picture the weird side project of Amanda Palmer, Michel Gondry, and George Grosz. The Turk’s unnerving introduction to the “show” invites viewers to “Get acquainted with … gambling games that never win … merry-go-rounds that will bore the hell out of you … motorways that will drive you into empty space … halls of shame and swindle … ” and other gloomy forms of entertainment. Meet The Turk’s theatrical cast of characters in our gallery below.
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Making its US debut at New York City’s Fred Torres Collaborations later this month, Earth Laughs In Flowers, a new series of 10 large-scale photographs by David LaChapelle, is shockingly devoid of celebrities. Rather, these painterly images take their inspiration from the floral still life paintings of the 1600s — think Jan Brueghel — and playfully subvert the tradition, modernizing the scene a bit with the inclusion of discarded cigarette butts, cellphones, Starbucks cups, and Barbie dolls. Click through now to preview the colorful, chaotic works which “explore contemporary vanity, vice, the transience of earthly possessions and, ultimately, the fragility of humanity,” and be sure to see them in person beginning on February 23rd.
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