Back in 1957, photographer Yousef Karsh asked an aging Earnest Hemingway to sit for a portrait. In what would become an iconic image, the author stares to the right of the camera, white-bearded and…
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Garry Winogrand’s first retrospective in 25 years at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is also the first exhibition to examine…
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by Stephen Pulvirent Back in 2002, photographer Nicholas Alan Cope picked up his camera and moved across the country from Maryland to Los Angeles, the city he documents in his new book “Whitewash.” Cope’s LA is one of stark geometric architecture rendered in black and white, a far cry from…
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In an age-old story of keeping up with the Joneses, author Germano Zullo has created a children’s picture book that follows the fate of two rival neighbors as they compete to build the most extravagant house imaginable. The original edition of “Sky High,” written in French and published in…
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For the 18th installment of The Thing Quarterly, the object-based periodical relied on Mike Mills to create a 2013 pocket calendar. Mills, a filmmaker and visual artist, has presented work at Sundance Film Festival and as part of MoMA’s New Directors New Films series, and is perhaps best known…
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Photographer Jacob Aue Sobol captures an emotional trip through Russia in black and white
by Warren Rubin
For the release of the newest Leica M-System camera, the black-and-white only M-Monochrom, Magnum photographer Jacob Aue Sobol journeyed across the Trans-Siberian Railway, stopping in Moscow, Ulan Bataar and Beijing with the camera and a 50 mm APO-Summicron-M lens.
The Leica M-Monochrom is the first 35mm-format commercial digital camera built exclusively for black-and-white photography. With a design based on the M9 and a sleek all-black exterior sans the typical red Leica logo, the Monochrom stands apart with its custom-designed CCD sensor that lacks the typical red, green and blue filters over the pixels. Rather than collecting color data, the camera captures luminance data—the amount of light striking each pixel—which allows it to resolve extreme detail and fine tonality.
Any photographer can make an image black-and-white in post-production, but the Monochrom’s 16-bit capture can detect roughly 65,000 different tones of gray compared to the M9, a 14-bit capture capable of only 16,000 tones. The Monochrom provides a much greater range of tone so that the base data used in post-processing, starts higher. “You have twice as much light reaching the sensor because you don’t have the color filter,” says Sobol, “so there were a lot of tones to work with in the post processing.”
Arrivals and Departures marked not only Sobol’s first time using a Leica, but the first time with a digital camera as well. Artists can go a lifetime without changing their medium, but as he relates, “It was a great experience. If people look at my prints with the Monochrom and you look at my prints taken with film, it’s pretty close.” He typically does high-contrast developing to create his prints, so his aim was to replicate this with the Monochrom. “The reaction I get is that people feel it is my voice and you can see it has my signature.”
On this trip he took close to 1,000 images a day, investing emotion in each one. He says, “I use the camera very much as a mirror, so I feel that with the people I photograph I am photographing a piece of myself. That’s my ambition for people who look at my pictures, that they can relate to some of these emotions and things they experience from their own life.”
As emotionally invested as Sobol is, no laughing or crying appears in any of his images. He feels these emotions would make his images too obvious. Instead, they remain emotionally open to him because, “it always happens to be that there is some emotion that seems stronger. Something that is really vibrating.”
Sobol, an award-winning photographer, plans to go back to the Trans-Siberian Railway to finalize this project. He is also planning a project to photograph twins, as he is a twin himself. He became an associate at Magnum in 2010 and when asked if being a part of Magnum influenced his work Jacob said, “Not really. I don’t think so. Maybe, but then I realized I had to be myself. I am grateful for the relationship with Magnum.”
Visit the website to find out more information and locate a dealer to purchase the Leica M-Monochrom.
Phenomenological art from a Detroit native
Discovered on our recent trip to Re:view Gallery in Detroit, Greg Fadell is an abstract artist hell-bent on taking messaging out of art. His massive grayscale aesthetic channels the rawness of abstraction and makes for a piece that is nothing if not experiential. The brother of Tony Fadell—former iPod designer and inventor of the Nest Learning Thermostat—Greg Fadell seems to share his brother’s desire to innovate and change. We recently caught up with Fadell in his Detroit studio, situated in an old public school building that has been converted—in that patently Detroit sort of way—into a movie theater, Montessori school and studio space.
The concept for Fadell’s current series, “Nothing”, came during a Parisian sojourn. Walking down the street, he came across a building undergoing renovation. The windows had been whitewashed for protection, and Fadell became obsessed with the spectral quality of the material. With his elementary command of French, he was able to ask the owner, “Qu’est-ce que c’est le blanc?” or “What is the white?”
Fadell went on to buy the substance, a fine powder, and develop his own paint using polymers and an acrylic base. Applying the paint with homemade brushes, Fadell quickly realized that the paintings lost depth from layering day after day. “I have to work wet, so once I start I cant stop,” he explains. With nearly two gallons of paint used for each work, it’s surprising that the works dry perfectly flat. The difference between white-on-black and black-on-white pieces is vast—white produces a cold color temperature while black is notably warmer.
The result of his effort is a painting that has a great degree of perceived depth, yet on close inspection appears to be a digital print. The sharpness disappears and the lines becomes noisy and indistinct. The effect is so convincing that a New York gallerist once accused Fadell of photoshopping his work. Her mind was changed when the piece was reversed and the paint-covered edges could be seen through the floating frame. Following this, Fadell learned the importance of showing his hand, and now exhibits the series unframed.
There is a lot of theory behind Fadell’s work, mostly surrounding the phenomenological notion of art as experiential and viewer-informed. This makes the work essentially irreproducible online, where the enveloping effect of his floor-to-cieling works is lost. Fadell is adamantly opposed to cleverness, and the title “Nothing” is more of an invitation to viewers rather than an artist’s statement. “There’s all this issue art,” says Fadell. “I have enough issues. I don’t need to create any more. I wanted to create something that allowed the viewer to bring their own impressions to it.”
An artist like Fadell is a rare phenomenon in the art world. Painters are increasingly a dying breed as concept art moves from the fringe into the mainstream. Mostly, his point of differentiation goes back to his years of skateboarding before skate culture had developed. Back when the sport was new, Fadell explains that there was nothing preset, no sense of what he was doing or why. “It’s like detroit,” he says. “I saw opportunity and potential in skateboarding.” That spirit eeks into his works, which have a spirit and energy that extend outside of time and place.
Hand-drawn artwork inspired by traditional tattoos and macabre iconography
Creating work dominated by occult imagery, nomadic themes and heavy linework, London-based illustrator Tom Gilmour says he finds inspiration in “black tattoo art and early 80’s skateboard graphics” to achieve a powerful aesthetic akin to something of a morbid blend of Gus Wagner and Jim Phillips. Gilmour draws each piece by hand in ink with splashes of watercolor and digital renderings to achieve certain shading effects.
While the deep gradients and heavy iconography of traditional tattoos are still very much present, Gilmour’s intricate designs tend to lean towards the experimentation of mixed symbolism for a unique depth not often seen in the flash-style tattoos from which he draws inspiration. By designing for paper rather than skin, Gilmour is free to draw without regard to certain contours or the stylistic limits of a tattoo gun, resulting in intricate detail and an unconventional use of space. The full-bleed design style, enhanced by the use of freehand script, helps much of Gilmour’s work make the leap from tattoo sketch to fine art.
Working as an illustrator by profession, Gilmour often lends his artistic abilities to various like-minded enterprises outside of his own sketchbook. Included in the impressive list of music-centric commissions is album cover art for metal band Lay Siege, T-shirt design for Cold Night For Alligators and promotional posters for international music festivals Sonisphere and Download. Gilmour takes such commercial assignments as opportunities to showcase his talents without sacrificing any style or artistic vision.
For a closer look at Gilmour’s illustrations see his personal site and design collective. To see more recent works and for the chance to purchase one-off prints see Gilmour’s often-updated blog and check out Wood & Cloud Publishing Co.
Macabre drawings modeled after discarded photographs from Scott Hunt
Artist Scott Hunt turns flea market photographs into modern-day allegories. In his new series of charcoal drawings currently on view at Schroeder, Romero and Shredder Gallery in New York, Hunt presents images that are enigmatic, humorous and occasionally discomforting. The black-and-white figures of “Then Darkness Fell” draw inspiration from turn of the century realism as well as film noir.
Hunt’s preoccupation with discarded photographs is driven by his desire to “save” anonymous people and objects from obscurity. By identifying elements of each photograph that he finds intriguing, Hunt removes them from their original context and uses them to create a new drawing. This creative process gives a second life to other people’s forgotten memories. “My subconscious narratives often reflect a dark, mysterious, and intrinsically Gothic view of America; suburbs leach danger, authority figures evince moral turpitude, nature threatens, and the surface of all things belies the more messy, complicated realities of being human,” explains Hunt.
Hunt’s aesthetic borrows heavily from the 1940s-60s, and is often fueled with an underlying dark awkwardness. Themes of alcoholism, racism, violence and exhibitionism can be found throughout the collection of highly composed drawings. Despite their macabre nature, the works are saved from being unrelentingly gloomy by a consistently wry sense of humor. “Then Darkness Fell” will be on display through 17 March 2012.
Schroeder, Romero and Shredder Gallery
531 West 26th Street
New York, NY 10001
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