Photographer Dana Lixenberg’s career has spanned well over two decades, with a distinct style that seamlessly swings from reportage to portraiture, and subjects that range from celebrities, all the way through to ‘individuals and communities on the margins of society’ around the world. Despite the discrepancies in the lifestyles of her subjects, her images are universally compelling and beautiful. Check out her extensive body of work at danalixenberg.com.
This is the blog of Dimitri Kalagas - Art Director and Filmmaker.
Some interesting and intimate images of a Californian marijuana grower and his farm in Maureen Drennan’s Meet Me In The Green Glen photography series. From featureshoot.com:
“This is an intimate look at a marijuana grower in California. We met a year ago and through this project have become close. Although marijuana is legal to grow and use in California within strict guidelines, there are situations in which it is still illegal. It is not culturally acceptable to grow or sell despite the fact that many people in the area grow pot and it is a large part of the local economy. Every year this grower, Ben, hires young men to help with the harvest season. They work for about one month and then he is alone again. The story I am communicating is not simply about pot growing, it is also about the experience of a socially isolated person and our relationship. Ben is obsessed, a little dark, and exists in an out of the way place.”
More at Feature Shoot and www.maureendrennan.net.
Last week I was flown up to Sydney by the good dudes at Monster Children for the launch of their photography annual and the announcement of the winners of their 2011 photo comp. I was pretty stoked to find that my submission to the action category (a shot I had taken during a boat trip from San Blas, Panama to Cartagena, Colombia) had won, and now I have a giant novelty cheque. Pretty awesome.
You can check the finalists and winning entries in the video above, or grab the MC Photo Annual at a newsagent near you.
THANKS DUDES!
I just submitted a bunch of photos to this, which forced me to rummage through the 50GB of images I had shot in Latin America, Europe and North Africa in the last couple of years - a job I’ve been putting off for way too long. So here’s a small and random selection of photos from Mexico, Cuba, Morocco and Panama that I thought were kinda nice.
These are just a few of the powerful and disturbingly beautiful images shot by photographer Daniel Berehulak after the devastating floods in Pakistan last year. Head over to Newsweek for the full story.
Some incredible images from The Atlantic of the Libyan Rebels and their DIY weapons.
“For the past four months in Libya, rebel forces made up of civilians and army defectors have been waging battles against Muammar Qaddafi’s armed forces, holding their own and sometimes advancing with the assistance of NATO air strikes. Scrambling to arm themselves against mercenaries and a professional army, rebels have been making use of everything they can — from using captured weapons and munitions to rigging anti-aircraft guns and aircraft rocket launchers to the backs of civilian pickup trucks. Collected here are recent images of some of this weaponry used by the Libyan rebels.”
Via Tmaction.
This short vid put together by AnOther for the What Do You Do For Fun? exhibition in London gives an interesting insight into the impetus and process behind the early documentary photography of Larry Clark.
Hello folks, happy belated new year. I realise things have been a little slow around here post-wise, chalk it up to a totally hectic end of 2010, coupled with 6 weeks of trekking through a European winter. Good times, but I will never leave an Australian summer to play in the snow ever again. Anyway, here are a very select bunch of images from my trip, which took in Switzerland, Germany, Portugal, Spain, Morocco and good ol’ London town. Good times were had, and way too much jamon was consumed.
An incredible series of images by photographer Olivier Grunewald, of a sulfur mine in the crater of the Kawah Ijen volcano in East Java, Indonesia. More pics and info here.
I recently finished up the latest look book for one of my longest running clients, Reform Clothing, and I’m pretty stoked with the results. Shot by Chris Tovo, styled by Nicole Collins, and with amazing grey make up by Natalie Burley, it was a great shoot, so I thought I’d share a few of the images above, and you can check more out here.
I had previously written about the incredible work of photographer Elmo Tide a couple of years back, when I found my way to his flickr stream via the always excellent Hamburger Eyes. His work was entirely unique, totally noir and seemingly from another time, yet filled with characters that were very much from the now. Amazing.
So after two years of wondering who Elmo Tide is, and if he was still shooting, I open my email this morning to find a message from the man himself, letting me know that he’s finally added to his collection on flickr - and it was definitely worth the wait. Pics above, and check out his new set in it’s full glory here.
A couple of interesting short films by two of my favourite photographers have recently dropped, and they couldn’t be more wildly different.
First up is an Ari Marcopoulos mini-doco on legendary LA-based tattoo artist Mark Mahoney, created for Yves Saint Laurent. The second vid is by Ryan McGinley and features footage of a model being put through her paces, all shot in super slow-mo on the make-anything-look-incredible phantom camera. All good things.
It’s been a while. I missed you guys.
So I guess I should bring you all up to speed. Some of you may be aware that I have been on the road, traveling through South and Central America for the last eight or so months. In fact, since my last post in Bogota I made my way through the Amazon in southern Colombia, heading downriver into Brazil, which I explored for almost two months. From there it was Cuba, then Mexico for two and a half months, culminating in a couple of weeks in LA. It has been a pretty amazing time. Like all things though, it inevitably had to come to an end, so now I am back in Melbourne, and it feels good.
Somewhere along the way I stopped posting about my travels (too much time spent living in the real world I guess) but now I’m back, so I’m going to do my best to post a retrospective about each place I have visited whenever I get a sec.
More excitingly, you may have noticed that things look a little different around here, probably due to the fact that I have done some remodeling, including a new website with actual work on it which you can find here. So go check it out, and tell your friends, cause I am open for business.
In other news, I am honored to have been invited to participate in an amazing exhibition in Spain run by the Brrothers Studio in Badalona. The project aims to create a canvas around 100 metres long and 1.5 metres high, representing a time-line of the most important moments of the city of Badalona, interpreted by 100 artists from all over the world. Ambitious and amazing. Check out the blog for the project, and the list of other artists involved here.
As well as this, I was also interviewed by the German creative website Elate Magazine while I was in Puerto Escondido, Mexico. You can check it out here.
So that’s pretty much it for now. Big things are bubbling away though, so stay tuned for more news soon.
After reluctantly saying goodbye to Providencia we headed back to mainland Colombia - specifically the capital city of Bogota. Nestled in the northern end of The Andes, Bogota is actually the third highest major city in the world, and you can feel it in the altitude when you arrive by plane. To look at, Bogota is definitely not a city with instant appeal. Drab architecture, and an average temperature that doesn’t get much past twenty degrees Celsius meant breaking out the jeans after almost two months of tropical glory. Having said all this, it was nice being back in a big city, and after a couple of days we were pretty much hooked.
Bogota is essentially made up of two sides, the wealthier northern suburbs including the hip yuppie area of Zona Rosa, and the southern areas where the majority of Bogota’s slums are situated. Located at the beginning of the southern district is the colonial area called La Candelaria, where the the hostels are to be found, which was where we ended up staying. Interesting and full of life during the day, La Candelaria’s poky little streets go a little nuts when the sun goes down, filling with drunks, crackheads and thugs, so needless to say it’s not the safest place to wander around. Luckily for us we had an excellent posse at our hostel, so we tended to roam in gringo packs, and pretty much every night was a party. To balance out the rampant debauchery, we spent our days soaking up Colombian culture at the Museo Botero and the Gold Museum, checked out the amazing view from Monseratte, and ate a lot of excellent cheap food. Despite all this goodness however, by the end of ten days in Bogota I was on the verge of self-inflicted ruin, so thankfully for me our next stop was deep in the Amazon jungle.
I do miss you though Bogota.
Oh, and Happy Birthday Emanuel, you crazy bald Swede.
