Gregory Crewdso

 In this post I am going to talk about my favorite photographer and artist Gregory Crewdson, an American photographer who is best known for elaborately staged, surreal scenes of American homes and neighborhoods. Gregory Crewdson works within a photographic tradition that combines the documentary style of William Eggleston and Walker Evans with the dream-like vision of filmmakers such as Stephen Spielberg and David Lynch. Crewdson’s method is equally filmic, building elaborate sets to take pictures of extraordinary detail and narrative portent. He says his pictures must first be beautiful, but that beauty is not enough. He strives to convey an underlying edge of anxiety, of isolation, of fear. The Dramatic use of studio lighting in his pictures even in exterior photography diferenciates his style from other photographers.

Joel Peter Witkin

In this post I would like to present the very interesting and sarcastic work of witkin, an American photographer born in 1939 in Brooklyn. His photos are mostly complex tableaux reminding classical pieces. He uses the concept of dead bodies and questions the existence. He also claims that the difficulties in his family were an influence for his work. Some of Witkin's works, namely those with corpses in them, have had to be created in Mexico in order to get around restrictive US laws. Because of the transgressing nature of the contents of his pictures, his works have been labeled exploitative and have sometimes shocked public opinion.

SUSAN MEISELA

Susan Meiselas received her B.A. from Sarah Lawrence College and her M.A. in visual education from Harvard University. Her first major photographic essay focused on the lives of women doing striptease at New England country fairs. She photographed the carnivals during three consecutive summers while teaching photography in the New York public schools. CARNIVAL STRIPPERS was published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux in 1976. A selection was installed at the Whitney Museum of Art in June 2000. The original book was revised and reprinted by the Whitney Museum and Steidl Verlag in 2003.
Her exhibition in Barcelona will be from 1.12.2011 to 30.01.2011 in Palau de la Virreina ( la Rambla 99).

TABÚ

In religious societies the value system is dominated by metaphysical notions and supernatural phenomenona rather that factual knowledge and individual's desire. In the heirachy of a religious value system, Individual's desire for things appears as the least of importance. In fact, due to the infinite eminence of the holy and supernatural concepts, all humanistic and individualistic feelings and desires are viewed as selfish, looked down upon and are highly suppressed. Desires are the beginning of putting self ahead of the holy, hence they have become the first and foremost taboo of such a society.
Yet interestingly, to glorify the holiness of the supernatural, religions apply the element of awe. An overwhelmed individual is prepared to worship the unknown; he might even create something greater than the given descriptions in his mind. Religious arts and architecture -especially in the dark ages- are the media for the emotional suffocation. These works use conceptual perfection as the symbol of unearthly matters; as a sign of existence of the phenomena that are inaccessible, nonhuman, and non-material. One of these techniques had been the use of symmetry -perfect symmetry is almost impossible to be found in human's surroundings. In almost all the religions, symmetry is a sign of holiness, a emblem for god, an indicator of flawless perfection. These artists and architects created symbolic design languages, using complex mathematical and geometrical concepts, to depict the profound extraordinary. However no human can do the work of god; man can not create a flawless work of art, and even if he can he is not allowed to do so, since it is an insult to the holy. Therefor they always implemented a conscious imperfection in the work. If one pays attention to these works, he can find an intentional error in every single one. An artist, a creator, purposely deprives his work of perfection to pay respect to the holy. And that is one example of how influential and suppressive religions are...

CHIHARU SHIOTA

Chiharu Shiota is a japanese Berlin based artist, she is the one who clambers around in the skeins of our unconscious. she weaves black yarn into hectic webs that take over entire galleries and in which personal objects are found cocooned. In one of her sleeping performances, you might even find Shiota herself ensconced beneath layers of mesh.

Ouka Leele

alias Ouka Leele, es una fotógrafa española (nacida en Madrid en 1957) protagonista principal de la Movida madrileña de comienzos de los 80. De formación autodidacta, destacan sus características fotografías en blanco y negro coloreadas y sus grabados.

Anna Maria Maiolino

Anna Maria Maiolino was born in Italy in 1942 and moved to Brazil at the age of eighteen. Studying painting in Rio de Janeiro her artistic career took shape in the 1960s and 1970s, a key period in Brazilian art when artistic experimentation clashed with a repressive political regime.

Employing diverse disciplines and mediums including clay, ink, film and performance, Anna Maria Maiolino’s work retains a fundamental concern with creative and destructive processes and with identity; from the subjective to the universal.