Photography

Old Master-Style Still Lifes of the Ridiculous Food Musicians Request on Tour

We’ve looked at the strange and hilarious demands that musicians made in their tour riders before, and artist Henry Hargreaves brought those contractual requests to life in a new photo series. In the style of Old Master paintings, Hargreaves photographed the nibbles pop stars like to stuff their faces with. “I was inspired to create this series after reviewing a few riders from some of the biggest acts in the world, all of which were ridiculous,” the artist wrote for Vice. “What I found most interesting about them is that they offered a glimpse into their larger-than-life personalities.” It’s true. Sinatra lived on booze, New Kids on the Block eat like 12-year-old boys, Axl Rose’s cuisine also makes you want to punch him in the face, and Prince sips tea. Meanwhile, Billy Idol has danced with himself for so long, he’s resorted to chocolate chip cookies and a tub of butter to soothe his weary feet (and soul). Take a closer look in our gallery. … Read More

Disconcerting Digitally Manipulated Photos That Echo Famous Paintings

It’s interesting, albeit not perhaps surprising, how the use of heavy-handed Photoshopping techniques as an artistic tool is generally confined to ostensibly digital images, art that draws attention to its own artifice. These pictures by Hungarian artist Flóra Borsi, which we came cross via Dangerous Minds, are decidedly different: they twist and contort the faces and bodies of models into shapes that match those of famous paintings. Borsi’s work is all the more disconcerting because it’s so naturalistic — you find yourself doing a double take at the people on display, especially as they’re posed right next to the paintings from which they’ve been taken. … Read More

A Tale of Two Cities: Compelling Photos Merge London and New York

As a Londoner living in New York, I’m often drawing parallels between the two cities. Central Park is (a prettier) Hyde Park; Williamsburg is trendier than Shoreditch; the Upper East Side’s as swanky as Chelsea, Washington Square Park swarming with NYU kids might as well be Russell Square crawling with UCL students, and so forth. With her photography series New York+London (spotted via Architizer), another English woman, Daniella Zalcman, has turned her homesick musings following her move to New York into art. … Read More

Side-By-Side Photos Illustrate Inequality in America

In his series, Created Equal, Detroit-born photographer Mark Laita explores social inequality by placing photos of US citizens who appear to be the opposites of each other (punks teens and Amish, for instance) side by side. The series took eight years to complete and is meant to show the “successes and failures that America has experienced in its short life.” Click through for a gallery of photos from Created Equal, discovered via Bored Panda, and visit Laita’s website for more info on the project and the book that came out of it. … Read More

The Dude Is an Award-winning Photographer: Jeff Bridges’ Best Behind-the-Scenes Shots

Jeff Bridges is not just The Dude, he’s THE dude: since 1982, he’s been snapping artistic photos of the sets he’s been on, some of himself, some of his directors and castmates. Last week, he was honored at the International Center of Photography’s Infinity Awards dinner as a special presenter. Here are some of the evocative black-and-white photos he took over the years. … Read More

Amazing Photographs by Children Living With Cancer

The third annual Pablove Shutterbugs Gallery Show at Kopeikin Gallery in Los Angeles recently celebrated truly beautiful photography by children living with cancer across the LA area. Numerous supporters contributing to making it happen, including the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. But to help raise money for future projects that encourage photography programs for pediatric cancer patients, the Pablove Shutterbugs Gallery Show hosted a special fundraising event May 4 full of work by big-name photographers like Herb Ritts, Piper Ferguson, Jeff Antebi, and many others. … Read More

Clever Surrealist Photographs That Evoke Man Ray’s Witty Spirit

Perhaps the most overlooked aspect of surrealism is that it was funny. For all that the eyeball-slicing of Un Chien Andalou and the nightmarish dreamscapes of Salvador Dalí’s paintings are singularly disconcerting, the movement also had an endearingly quirky sense of humor — one that’s echoed in these playfully surrealist black-and-white pictures at Faith is Torment. They evoke the spirit of Man Ray, juxtaposing the mundane and the bizarre in ways that are both striking and amusing: a spoon casts the shadow of a fork, a ladder leads into a mirror, plates sit stacked in the grating that covers a street drain. They’re the work of Spanish photographer Jose Maria Rodriguez Madoz, who goes by the name Chema Madoz. Click through for a selection of his wittiest and most imaginative images.
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Powerfully Evocative Portraits of Four Sisters Photographed Over 30 Years

“You know full well as I do the value of sisters’ affections: there is nothing like it in this world,” Charlotte Brontë once wrote. We’ve examined the special connection between sisters in literature and art before. However, few have illustrated the emotional bond sisters share more poetically than photographer Nicholas Nixon. … Read More

Haunting Photos of Abandoned Planes in the Middle of Nowhere

Wired introduced us to the work of Dietmar Eckell, who photographs abandoned airplanes in remote locations. The haunting images of the metal behemoths sinking into gorgeous, deserted landscapes are dramatic and surreal. The series Happy End started when the artist was researching the “visual disruption of nostalgic technology in endless landscapes,” and continued when he drew a connection between the ghostly planes and the shipwreck/marine paintings of the Romantic period. The aircraft Eckell documented are the relics of forced landings in faraway places (some abandoned now for 10 to 17 years), but thankfully everyone on board survived. The artist wants to share the stories he uncovered in a book he’s currently campaigning to fund. Visit Eckell’s work in our gallery, and head to his Indiegogo page to learn more. … Read More

Breathtaking Photographs of Alonzo King LINES Ballet Dancers

As of this year, Alonzo King has spent three decades changing the face of ballet, sculpting a traditional classical dance form into a modern template for fluidity and cross-pollination. In his choreography for San Francisco’s own Alonzo King LINES Ballet, King has collaborated with numerous artists and musicians representing traditions from all over the world, including Baka artists from the Central African Republic (People of the Forest, 2001), Shaolin monks from China (Long River High Sky, 2007), tabla master Zakir Hussain (Scheherazade, 2009), and actor Danny Glover (Before the Blues, 2004). … Read More