Photography

When looking at Roger Ballen’s photographs you might think “What the fuck?!, “Who are these people?”, “Where do they live?” and “Jesus, who the hell took these pictures?”. Well at least that was, what Yolandi & Ninja, better known as Die Antwoord, thought when they saw his work for the first time. They knew instantly that they have found the identity and style for their music project that was still in its infancy at that time.     Roger gets a lot of requests of artists who want to work with him, but since he didn’t know the duo personally he first rejected them. After a while he received many messages about a band that has risen in popularity and used his photos and drawings. Everybody wanted to know what he thought of them. Only then he realised who they were talking about and Die Antwoord finally got Roger’s attention.     The photographer was born in New York, but moved to South Africa 30 years ago. Just like almost every South African, Yolandi & Ninja were struggling with their heritage and national identity, until they saw their nation represented in Roger’s pictures. They threw away all the music and imagery they’ve worked on for years and started from scratch to fit their new found concept – the “Roger Ballen freak-mode-zone”.     The raw, demented graffiti Roger used in his photographs affected the two artists in a psychological way by ripping open the filters that limited their creativity. They finally were able to open up to their animal-like subconscious zones. Roger, on the other hand, was overwhelmed to have sparked such inspiration.     Six years after Roger and Die Antwoord first met, the video to “I Fink U Freeky” premiered. It was Roger’s first music video and it was shot in 5 days at an old warehouse. Just like for every other of his projects he walked around the location to collect the props for the video – he even found the stuffed lion in a room of the abandoned warehouse. Everything else came naturally, Roger can not recall whose idea certain sequences were, because they were so in sync.     Yolandi & Ninja studied Roger’s work so well, they know it better than most gallerists and had a clear vision of what they wanted to implement. In the end, their aesthetics fused. The theme of both, Roger’s & Die Antwoord’s work is a dark and raw illustration of the basic human instinct. It depicts how we all are just animals in the most unfiltered way. The main subjects are those characteristics that make us human, such as sexuality. But sexuality in a subtle way that requires more interpretation by the audience. The style of Roger’s images and drawings is so iconic, it got his own adjective: ballenesque.     Roger Ballon’s talk will definitely be one of the highlights of this year’s Forward Festival in Munich. You should not miss it! Find out more about him on his speaker profile and get your ticket here.  

Issue 8 of Max Siedentopf's magazine Ordinary puts a spotlight on toilet paper. From Siedentopf, one of our upcoming speakers at Forward Festival Munich and Hamburg, we didn't expect anything less odd and hilarious as this. Originally from Windhoek, Namibia, Siedentopf works as an artist, publisher, director at “riffraff”, co-founder of “Ordinary magazine” and creative director and partner at “KesselsKramer”. In this issue, one can learn that toilet paper is not only well used as a cleaning tissue for fecal material and other bodily fluid releases.   [caption id="attachment_11147" align="alignright" width="1500"] Aaron Tilley for Ordinary Magazine[/caption]   [caption id="attachment_11148" align="alignright" width="1500"] David Uzochukwu for Ordinary Magazine[/caption]   [caption id="attachment_11149" align="alignright" width="1500"] Rottingdean Bazaar & Annie Collinge for Ordinary Magazine[/caption]   [caption id="attachment_11156" align="alignright" width="1500"] Mauricio Alejo for Ordinary Magazine[/caption]   [caption id="attachment_11150" align="alignright" width="1500"] Dexter Lander & Max Blotas for Ordinary Magazine[/caption]   [caption id="attachment_11151" align="alignright" width="1500"] Peter Langer for Ordinary Magazine[/caption]   [caption id="attachment_11152" align="alignright" width="1500"] Nico Krijno for Ordinary Magazine[/caption]   [caption id="attachment_11153" align="alignright" width="1500"] Michael Hauptmann for Ordinary Magazine[/caption]   Check out Ordinary Magazine's Website for more info: http://ordinary-magazine.com. More about the artist: http://maxsiedentopf.com/

Raw, unfiltered, provocative – just a few words that come to one’s mind while looking at the artistic work of Larry Clark. Regardless of whether it is about his photography or his films, the expressive images move anybody and everyone has their opinion. His main motive is youth culture and everything regarding it, from sexuality and violence to skateboards and drugs.     Born and raised in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Larry soon got in touch with photography since his mother was an itinerant baby photographer. Also at the early age of 16 he and his friends started experimenting with injecting amphetamines. After attending the Layton School of Art in Milwaukee and serving in the USA army during the Vietnam war, he published his first book ‘Tulsa' in 1971. In this black and white photo documentary he illustrates the everyday life of him and his young friends including their drug use. The publication sparked a sensation in the photographic community and ignited a new interest in autobiographical work.     The experience of directing a music video for Chris Isaak in 1993 raised Larry's interest in film direction. His first feature film ‘Kids’ depicts all of his common topics as well as the spreading of AIDS. It was released to controversy and mixed critical reception in 1995 and immediately reached cult status.     Larry’s work is intimate, vulnerable and very personal. He says about his working method: “I am a storyteller. I've never been interested in just taking the single image and moving on. I always like to stay with the people I'm photographing for long periods of time.”     Next to numerous films and books, his artistic work also includes a collaboration with renowned skateboard and clothing brand Supreme. In celebration of the 20th anniversary of 'Kids' in 2015 he contributed stills from the iconic movie for the design of a collection of decks, t-shirts and sweatshirts. Before this project he already shot provocative pictures for the brand which were published as a calendar amongst others.     In 2015 he switched from being behind the camera to becoming the face of the Dior Homme AW16 campaign, followed by a short film directed by Larry for their SS17 campaign.       Since his archives were overflowing he decided to sell his prints for a small amount. "The sale is for people who come to my shows in thousands and could never afford 10 to 15 thousand dollars for a print. This is a payback to all the skate rats and collectors who would like a souvenir, so I can die happy.”. Until May 5th, you have the chance to purchase original prints of photos taken since the 1970’s at 'Retramp’ in Berlin for only €100. Browse through stills of his movies, behind the scenes snapshots, as well as photo shoots for Supreme and Dior.  

 

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Gebhart latest work A Guide To Better Being draws attention to the art of inventing practical but useless tools - called Chindōgu. Chin..what? Chindōgu is Japanese and literally means "useless/weird tool". The term was coined in the 90ies by Kenji Kawakami who used it in his comical section in his monthly magazine Mail Order Life. Popularised in the English-speaking community through Kawakami's and Dan Papia's magazine Tokyo Journal, a fan base for odd tools grew steadily. Chindōgu as such is the perfect balance between creativity and absurdity.     We've already featured Gebhart's work Make Alpaka Great Again in our latest Print-Magazine because we just can't get enough of his witty eye for oddness.   In the photo series A Guide To Better Being, some of the most hilarious gadgets are being showcased, such as a double-sided toothbrush for maximum efficient brushing, glasses with funnels for eye drops, the hugging pillow with your boyfriend's shirt for those lonely nights,  and a toilet roll head holder for that runny allergy sufferer's nose.                 Check out Daniel's website for more: https://gebhart.dk/

There was a time when you could only love or hate Benetton ads. There was no in between. This was largely due to the work of Benetton's Art Director Oliviero Toscani. Whether genital calendars, gay and lesbian couples with baby carriages or a nun kissing a priest - Toscani’s advertising campaigns for Benetton provide a topic of conversation.

Great Britain is known for it’s grey and rainy weather, but where there’s rain, there might also be a rainbow. In this case a very colourful and shimmering rainbow: The drag queens and LGBTQI party-goers. Photographer Charley Williams portrays the queer community of her hometown Bristol, one of the most progressive and vibrant places in Britain. She manages to catch this liberating spirit in her work.     The photo of Montell Cunningham mid-transformation into his alter-ego Dominique Fleek got shortlisted for the Portrait of Britain 2018. For Charley it was important to show both the masculine and feminine aspects of his personality because it symbolizes the ongoing cultural shift towards gender and sexual fluidity.     Unfortunately, as a LGBTQ person of color Montell is confronted with discrimination on a daily basis and at higher risk of attack because of his orientation and race. With her work, Charley wants to make a statement and push back against all the hatred and homophobia.     Her main interest has always been how people present themselves to the world. The struggle between rejecting labels and still holding on to them to define who we are fascinates her. Therefore drag has been and still will be a huge topic for her in the future.     Charley says about herself, that she enjoys to photograph the wacky and interesting, anything that pushes the boundaries. Her love for watching people plays well with her artistic work, since her patience to wait for the right moment becomes visible in her photographs.     If you want to know more about Charley visit her website.

Back in the 1970s Laurie Simmons took a job in a factory which produced dolls and dollhouses. This was a determining step for her career, since she used the miniature objects for her own artistic work. She started to take photographs of everyday scenes, which she recreated with the toys. Laurie focused on her own experience during her childhood in the 1950s. The motives were defined by stern gender roles and the domestic ideal of the time – channeling the myth of the American dream.     Laurie soon moved on from her employment in the factory to being a full-time photographer, but dolls remained a recurrently element in her work. She always enjoyed working with dolls, because she was constantly able to keep the control. Also she wanted to confuse her audience whether the scenery was life-sized or not.   During the late 80s and the early 90s she created her series “Walking and Lying Objects”. A surreal combination of doll(-like) legs and lifeless objects like houses, cakes and accessories. In 2014, Laurie revived the project in a new series of "Walking Objects", as well as for photographs for Chanel in 2005 and a few award trophies.     For her book “The Love Doll”, Laurie documented her days with an high-end love doll from Japan. During the shooting of her first video work "The Music of Regret" (2006) in Tokyo one of her children drew her attention to a poster for the lifelike dolls. She immediately felt that this was exactly what she was looking for her entire life. The series covers their relationship from the day the doll got delivered onwards. The result is an illustration of the evolving relationship between the doll and the artist – and later between the first doll and the second one, which arrived one year later. This project took her work to a spooky new level of realism.     One of her latest photographic projects from 2015 "How We See" shows models with doll-eyes painted over their closed eyelids. The unearthly look give the observer the impression that the young girls are staring through their closed eyes. The inspiration behind this project were the problems of self-worth and identity that afflicts the fragile modern-day society. Laurie alludes to the online phenomenon of the “Doll Girl” culture, a community of people who alter themselves to look like their idols, such as Barbie, baby dolls, and Japanese anime characters. The sacrifices that are made to reach the idealistic look comprise from make-up and dresses, up to plastic surgery.     To complete the overview about Laurie Simmons' artistic biography, we want to recommend her film "My Art" (2016), which was written and directed by herself, as well as her being the main character. The feature-length film about an artist from New York portrays her relationship to her work, as well as Laurie becoming the performer of an identity, the artist, the object.   [embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=quPU12W-7dg[/embed]   All of the mentioned projects and more are part of a current retrospective "Big Camera/ Little Camera" by the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. For more info about the artist click here.

“Better Living with Alpacas” by Austrian photographer Daniel Gebhart de Koekkoek is the calendar you never knew you needed. With his new project Daniel has unearthed the secret to eternal happiness. It isn’t money, fame or love — it’s alpacas.

A short while ago, by the end of summer, a couple of fishlike tails appeared at a laundromat in Downtown LA. On a closer look they seem to be tails of mermaids, hanging out of the big washing machines at the Laundry Zone in Arlington Heights. But how and why did they get there? Artist and author Olivia Erlanger has the answer.

Deep red masses of trees bleeding within an ocean of concrete buildings presented in muted tones, an unpleasant yellow sky dominating the atmosphere. At first glance, the pictures of Vicente Munoz’s ongoing series „Sublimis“ seem to throw the observer into a dystopic, yet fictional world. But taking a closer look, one realizes that the images portray the photographer’s hometown Guayaquil, a 16th century port city and Ecuador’s commercial capital.

Over the last three years, the London-based photographer Peter Zelewski took portraits of identical twins, which resulted in his project “Alike But Not Alike.” He explores the similarities as well as the striking differences between twins and askes: how identical are they really?

We’ve all seen our fair share of cocky dancers, but they’re usually in a club after 2am pretending they’ve got “swagger” and they rarely look anything like this. Photographer and visual artist Ernest Goh, however, has created a series of images that highlight the beauty and character that chickens can exhibit when given a chance.