Feb 09 2008
Post office
Jean-Luc Cramatte, a swiss photographer, presents his recent work: Post office , my love.
He has shot around 150 post office in his country, as a documentary project.
Tag Archive 'photographer'
Jan 10 2008
Israelis and Palestinians portraits past on the separation wall
FACE2FACE a project by JR:
“When we met in 2005, we decided to go together in the Middle-East to figure out why Palestinians and Israelis couldn’t find a way to get along together. We then traveled across the Israeli and Palestinian cities without speaking much. Just looking to this world with amazement. This holy place for Judaism, Christianity and Islam. This tiny area where you can see mountains, sea, deserts and lakes, love and hate, hope and despair embedded together.
After a week, we had a conclusion with the same words: these people look the same; they speak almost the same language, like twin brothers raised in different families. A religious covered woman has her twin sister on the other side. A farmer, a taxi driver, a teacher, has his twin brother in front of him. And he his endlessly fighting with him.
It’s obvious, but they don’t see that. We must put them face to face. They will realize.
We want that, at last, everyone laughs and thinks when he sees the portrait of the other and his own portrait. The Face2Face project is to make portraits of Palestinians and Israelis doing the same job and to post them face to face, in huge formats, in unavoidable places, on the Israeli and the Palestinian sides.
In a very sensitive context, we need to be clear. We are in favor of a solution for which two countries, Israel and Palestine would live peacefully within safe and internationally recognized borders. All the bilateral peace projects (Clinton/Taba, Ayalon/Nussibeh, Geneva Accords) are converging in the same direction. We can be optimistic. We hope that this project will contribute to a better understanding between Israelis and Palestinians.Today, “Face to face” is necessary.
Within a few years, we will come back for “Hand in hand”.”
Jan 07 2008
Urban landscapes of Iceland
Pascal Felloneau, photographer from the collective GetThePicture, presents his new work called Urban landscapes of Iceland.
Jan 04 2008
TV viewers around the World
Olivier Culmann photographs people watching TV. And their TV sets. The viewers’ eyes are glued to the screen, hypnotized by the images that flicker by.
Olivier Culmann captures that instant during which attention subsides and consciousness slumbers, rocked to sleep by the phosphorescence of the cathode ray tubes. At that instant, their bodies often become comfortable, they curl up on the couch and then collapse.
Nothing could be more banal. And nothing more unsettling. Because that is how, in quasi-immobile passivity, when the brain has gone numb, that we television viewers receive the world in its entirety. Not the real world, but an image of that world, a ghostly version of reality. The news, comedy series, broadcasts from the other ends of the planet, or from just downstairs, are plopped down before our anaesthetized eyes. Their impact is enormous.
During that time during which existence is deadened, that may last a few minutes or several hours, our ideas about others evolve and are transformed. Our preconceptions collapse and others replace them, inexorably.
Morocco, India, the United States, Mexico: TV viewers in those four countries receive news about each other without ever meeting. As they sit in front of the TV set, we get the feeling we know them. Looking at them, Olivier Culmann is looking at us.
Text by Cécile Cazenave, journalist
© Olivier Culmann / Tendance Floue
Dec 31 2007
Tiina Itkonen
Born in Helsinki in 1968, Itkonen studied photography at the School of Art and Communication in Turku and at the University of Art and Design in Helsinki. She has exhibited across Europe and her work is held in permanent collections at the Modern Museum, Stockholm, Helsinki City Art Museum, The Finnish Museum of Photography, and the Finnish State Art Collection. Itkonen was Finnish Young Photographer of the Year 2003 and a Fotofinlandia finalist in 1996 and 2004.
The Arctic has always been a source of fascination for explorers, adventurers, traders and whalers. It is a land of extreme weather, days and nights that last months and a landscape which is both deadly and beautiful. Itkonen’s images of this frontier range from immense icy landscapes steeped in blue light to intimate portraits of the Inuit at home in western clothes and polar bear trousers! Itkonen’s time with the Inuit allowed her to capture their humour, warmth and their unique relationship with the immense barren land which provides their livelihood. Her photographs record the rhythm of their lives and the impression the modern world has made on the ways the Inuit have always lived.
Tiina Itkonen has published a beautiful book called ‘Inughuit’.
© Tiina Itkonen
Dec 29 2007
Less Travelled
Less Travelled is the road chosen by those who are willing to explore one step further. It refers to less frequented synaptic routes that mediate our new experiences and sensations. To forge new pathways creates original views and new insights. These are the roads less travelled.
To travel is to discover and to exchange, to carry with you, leave behind, to mix, grind and rediscover. Through reflection and confrontation in a completely new environment we may begin to form new views from the outside in and from the inside out. The works presented in this exhibition all respond to this dilemma. Anna Boggon’s poetic reflections in cast glass and resin pieces combine with her periscope-cabinet which opens onto new vertiginous realities. Lu Chunsheng’s 29-minute narrative video The History Of Chemistry leaves us with an unsettling sense of bewilderment. This feeling becomes even stronger in Yue Luping’s Far People Project which deals with personal displacement within constructed and mediated group identities. Lastly, David Cotterrell’s self-replicating portrayal of a projected maximum density urban settlement echoes the actual backdrop of a realised dream.
Less Travelled is the concluding exhibition of the Artist Links China programme, a joint project between Arts Council England and the British Council. Artist Links seeks to nurture a fragile cross-cultural environment between China and Britain through links between contemporary arts practitioners. As a development opportunity for artists, the programme has facilitated early stage development of over 60 artists’ projects in China and in England. These artists are young, emerging and established practitioners. Their work covers theatre, dance, live intervention, new music, sound work, video and other lens based practice, installation, performance, ceramics, curating, digital work and other cross art form practice. Whilst some of the artists have international reputations, all are working very effectively within their own regions and countries.
© Yue Luping
