Corbis Contemporary

Corbis is one of the largest and most diverse digital licensing agencies in the world, representing all types of images to licensing clients worldwide. Along with the works from museums and agencies, our art collection represents a vibrant and growing roster of contemporary artists. Here is just a taste of their work. To become a Corbis-represented artists, click on Call for Artists if you'd like to submit your portfolio.

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The Envelope Please… It’s that time of the year – time to give a shout out to the artists and artworks that shone the brightest in 2013. These are works from a stellar group of artists recently joining Corbis’ contemporary collection, as well as new work from some of our more established names. Explore the best of the best, as we say thanks to our artists and their dedication to the creative process. Best of 2013 Gallery License this Image

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Hugh Shurley – Wrestling with Souls

How does an artist combine materials, images, and thoughts to display a soul?  An emotion?  A moment?  Hugh Shurley is a decidedly traditional artist – using glass plates, found objects, sepia tones, collage.  But his images are anything but.  They are viscerally human, achingly intimate, and all about our being and our place in this world.  Are they easy to see?  Some are beautiful, some inscrutable, some offer difficult echoes of constraint and yearning.  All are striking and unmistakably his.  As Hugh asks of his viewers: “Look carefully into them and through them…”  They offer the viewer no answers, but you may find the right question.

Hugh has had numerous solo and group exhibitions in the US and abroad, and is part of the permanent collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Sony Corporation, and the Human Rights Campaign.  He is represented by the John Pence Gallery and his work has appeared in Rolling Stone, Premier and Genre.

Wrestling with Souls Gallery License this Image

Hugh Shurley at Corbis        The Artists' Website

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Robert Brook – Ghost in the Machine

“Brightness set against dark space, the tangible 'here' against the unknowable 'there'.”

Light and dark in the emptiness of the industrial landscape – Robert Brook’s ‘Less Light’ photographs find brilliance and brightness best in the blackness of an empty, commercial night.  Shooting warehouses, crumbling roads, storage facilities and just plain trash in London, Wrexham, Essex, and other UK locations, Brook finds that “it is not the strength of light which is an issue, but its difference.”  Visually stunning images and timely economic narratives are the result.  His night work has been published widely in the UK, Europe and the United States.

License this Image     Ghost in the Machine Gallery

Less Light Website     Robert Brook at Corbis

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Nathan Griffith – Accident/Artifice

Found environments are the forté of Seattle fine art photographer Nathan Griffith.  Through signage, space, juxtaposition & irony, Nathan strips our made space of its inhabitants.  Yet his work reveals much about our strange, chaotic, created world.  Some good, some not so much.  As he says of his work, which started when he was handed his grandfather’s Rolleiflex, “I made a mess in any way I could”.  Making a mess of order & artifice – how human.

License this Image         Nathan Griffith Gallery

All Nathan Griffith Works at Corbis

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Little Red Hen – Recent Work by Cha Davis

A little hen named Ester opened a door for Seattle artist Cha Davis – transforming her from a sometime sculptor, accordion player, cartoonist, and musician, to inspired and enthralling painter of G. gallus domesticus.  Witty, lush, and compulsively engaging, to Cha these fabulous creatures meant belonging and finding home.  What do they teach us?  As she says, “No thing is just anything.  If everyone had a relationship to that possibility, I think we’d move ahead a few steps in the long queue to our better angels.”

License this Image

Artist Gallery

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New Artist – Catherine MacBride

Based in Dublin, Ireland, Cat MacBride brings vibrancy, play, and sly humor to broad conceptual themes.  Combining craft and her artistry as a photographer, she weaves a tapestry out of intimacy, mystery, and the humdrum of the everyday.  Whether using paper, pebbles, or digital effects, her work is immediately recognizable for its unique style and atmospheric presence.  Enjoy the ride.

  License this Image               Catherine MacBride Gallery

Visit the Artists' Website      All Catherine MacBride Works at Corbis

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Boyd & Evans – Black & White & Color

Fionnuala Boyd and Les Evans hate labels.  And boundaries.  One boundary they cross is the traditional divide between painting and photography.  Working in Europe and their beloved American Southwest, their landscape photographs originally functioned only as source material for their paintings.  But as their art evolved, they discovered:

“…an increasing understanding of how photographs can be re-formed to convey the essence and substance of a landscape, which otherwise could only have existed in their mind's eye or as pigment laid down on canvas.”

With this series, they are also eager to mix the hallowed purity of black & white with a surprising juxtaposition of color.  Boyd & Evans have been featured in solo exhibitions for more than 40 years and are widely published.

License this Image          Black & White & Color Gallery

Visit the Artist's Website All Boyd & Evans Works at Corbis

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Dean Forbes - Intimate Grandeur

The black & white dune photography of Dean Forbes is filled with contradictions – intimate and grand, classical and innovative, abstract and familiar, filled with blinding light and the blackness of void.  Dean’s dune portfolio reflects a deep knowledge of the photographic medium, and yet a simple goal of catching a shimmer of our world.  Shooting in black & white and color for over 35 years, Dean is based in Seattle and has just recently joined Corbis’ roster of contemporary artists.  We’re lucky to have him.

  Dune Gallery      42-49990785/License this Image

See all of Dean's work at Corbis

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Welcome New Contemporary Artists

Corbis welcomes our new contemporary artists, featuring here works from around the world by Catherine MacBride, Dean Forbes, Robert Brook, Raymond St. Arnaud, Jill Ferry and others.  From new takes on classic B&W to ingenious paper constructions, we welcome the diversity and creativity of these new artists, and look forward to representing their art to our worldwide licensing clients. If you'd like to join their ranks, click on 'Call for Artists' above.

Image Gallery     42-49743051/License this Image

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Frozen Physics

Using high-speed liquid stop motion photography, Jim Kramer’s artistic work poses great technical challenges.  Here is how he describes his technique:  “In order to capture these events you have to freeze the action, typically in less than a ten thousandth of a second.  The shutter speeds on SLR cameras are too slow, so I use a pulse of light rather than a shutter to stop the action.  By working in a dimly lit studio, I lock the shutter open for a second or so, and use a very brief pulse of light to capture the liquid collision as it happens.  By using a laser trigger sensor in the path of the falling drop, I can precisely control the timing, causing the studio strobes to fire at exactly the right moment.”

Image Gallery     42-36120930/License this Image

Artist Website

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What Was, Is...

New York-based artist Tobi Seftel transforms the whimsy and light of vintage toys into 50s set pieces, complete with men gone mad and furniture gone tiny.  And watch out for those clowns…

Image Gallery

42-48641000/License this Image

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Selected Works by Contemporary Artists

Corbis represents a diverse community of contemporary artists, working in a wide range of styles and media.  Featured here are works by a few of our artists, including classic Photorealists, renowned fine art photographers, regional painters, and rising stars of the New York gallery scene.  Together they enrich one of the most intriguing, diverse, and growing collections of contemporary fine art available for professional licensing.

Image Gallery

42-17351538/License this Image

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Photorealism from the Louis K. Meisel Gallery

Legendary gallery owner and scholar Louis K. Meisel coined the term “Photorealism” in the 70s, putting a spotlight on the new school of hyper realist painting.  Photorealists use the photograph as a map for the creation of their paintings, and bring the most lowly object or the most pedestrian subject into the hallowed realm of monumental painting.  Highlights here are the marbles and toys of Charles Bell, the storefronts of Tom Blackwell, the motels of Robert Gniewek, and the cluttered backyards of Reynard Milici, among others.

Artists' Website  Image Gallery

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Doug Landreth – Beauty/Beast

Doug Landreth has been an accomplished commercial photographer for over 20 years.  While striving to evolve from a sharp and crisp to a more painterly style, he discovered his own potential as a fine artist.  And he has many talents.  PhotoShop wizardry is a major one.  Obsessive love of surface and texture is another.  All of these elements combine in his breathtaking series of butterflies, beetles, orchids and other assorted flora and fauna, seemingly preserved for our study in the brightest of colors.  They’re a technicolor, digitally constructed Victorian cabinet of curiosities.

Artists' Website  Image Gallery

42-16648369/License this Image

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Arthur Tress – Requiem for a Paperweight

Legendary artist Arthur Tress grew up a child of Coney Island, became a world traveler, and then a photo-activist of environmental and urban decay.  His journey eventually led him to a photographic art he described as “magic realism.”  Influenced by Hokusai, El Lissitzky and Duane Michals, his work swims in dreams and archetypes, emotional drama, and sly pranksterism.  Tress completed the series “Requiem for a Paperweight” in 1992, as part of an installation including a found sound score by R. Weis.  Using no digital effects, double exposures, or technical tricks of any sort, the series conjures the unrealistic promises, dashed dreams, and high hopes of the archetypal late 20th century white-collar worker.  And oddly enough, it’s a blast.

Artists' Website  Image Gallery

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Jefferson Hayman - Still

Classical.  Delicate.  Technically sophisticated.  Nostalgic.  However you define his work, the still life photographs of Jefferson Hayman are deafeningly quiet.  You can just about hear yourself breathe as you address a hat, a shirt, some apples, or a torso.  A technocrat in the best sense of the word, Jefferson uses highly accomplished techniques to bring the viewer to that rarest of experiences - a truly still moment.  It’s a hard experience to find today.  Hayman’s photographs, mounted in vintage bespoke frames, reside in major collections including MoMA and the NYPL.

Artists' Website  Image Gallery

42-40860967/License this Image