In this series, Caillard shows how a typical presence on beaches (lifeguard house) can change his own aspect. The shots are all framed in the same way and that makes differences much more outstanding.
The new Totemsseries by Alain Delorme plunges us into the core of contemporary China and its complexity. Under the blue sky of a highly colored Shanghai, men carry throughout the city unbelievable piles. These precarious columns made of cardboard or chairs appear as new totems of a society in complete transformation, both a factory for the world and a new El Dorado of the market economy.
After the establishment of EU no one of the old customs places setted between every state member of it was useful anymore. In the Schulz's photos, shooted from 2006 to 2008, these places appears like ghost structures.
In “Angels in Fall” I am interested in documenting the disconnection and forlorness of man to his environment.
In „Angels in Fall” beschäftige ich mich mit der Distanzierung des Menschen zum Raum und Verlorenheit in seiner Umgebung.
These photographs came about after a friend emailed me an image taken on a cellphone through a car window in Lagos, Nigeria, which depicted a group of men walking down the street with a hyena in chains. A few days later I saw the image reproduced in a South African newspaper with the caption ‘The Streets of Lagos’. Nigerian newspapers reported that these men were bank robbers, bodyguards, drug dealers, debt collectors. Myths surrounded them. The image captivated me.
Through a journalist friend I eventually tracked down a Nigerian reporter, Adetokunbo Abiola, who said that he knew the ‘Gadawan Kura’ as they are known in Hausa (a rough translation: ‘hyena handlers/guides’).
A few weeks later I was on a plane to Lagos. Abiola met me at the airport and together we took a bus to Benin City where the ‘hyena men’ had agreed to meet us. However, when we got there they had already departed for Abuja.
In Abuja we found them living on the periphery of the city in a shantytown - a group of men, a little girl, three hyenas, four monkeys and a few rock pythons. It turned out that they were a group of itinerant minstrels, performers who used the animals to entertain crowds and sell traditional medicines. The animal handlers were all related to each other and were practising a tradition passed down from generation to generation. I spent eight days travelling with them.
The spectacle caused by this group walking down busy market streets was overwhelming. I tried photographing this but failed, perhaps because I wasn’t interested in their performances. I realised that what I found fascinating was the hybridisation of the urban and the wild, and the paradoxical relationship that the handlers have with their animals - sometimes doting and affectionate, sometimes brutal and cruel. I started looking for situations where these contrasting elements became apparent. I decided to concentrate on portraits. I would go for a walk with one of the performers, often just in the city streets, and, if opportunity presented itself, take a photograph. We travelled around from city to city, often chartering public mini-buses.
I agreed to travel with the animal wranglers to Kanu in the northern part of the country. One of them set out to negotiate a fare with a taxi driver; everyone else, including myself and the hyenas, monkeys and rock pythons, hid in the bushes. When their companion signalled that he had agreed on a fare, the motley troupe of humans and animals leapt out from behind the bushes and jumped into the vehicle. The taxi driver was completely horrified. I sat upfront with a monkey and the driver. He drove like an absolute maniac. At one stage the monkey was terrified by his driving. It grabbed hold of my leg and stared into my eyes. I could see its fear.
Two years later I decided to go back to Nigeria. The project felt unresolved and I was ready to engage with the group again. I look back at the notebooks I had kept while with them. The words ‘dominance’, ‘codependence’ and ‘submission’ kept appearing. These pictures depict much more than an exotic group of travelling performers in West Africa. The motifs that linger are the fraught relationships we have with ourselves, with animals and with nature.
The second trip was very different. By this stage there was a stronger personal relationship between myself and the group. We had remained in contact and they were keen to be photographed again. The images from this journey are less formal and more intimate.
The first series of pictures had caused varying reactions from people - inquisitiveness, disbelief and repulsion. People were fascinated by them, just as I had been by that first cellphone photograph. A director of a large security company in theUSAcontacted me, asking how to get in touch with the ‘hyena group’. He saw marketing potential: surely these men must use some type of herb to protect themselves against hyenas, baboons, dogs and snakes? He thought that security guards, soldiers and his own pocket could benefit from this medicine.
Many animal-rights groups also contacted me, wanting to intervene (however, the keepers have permits from the Nigerian government). When I asked Nigerians, “How do you feel about the way they treat animals”, the question confused people. Their responses always involved issues of economic survival. Seldom did anyone express strong concern for the well-being of the creatures. Europeans invariably only ask about the welfare of the animals but this question misses the point. Instead, perhaps, we could ask why these performers need to catch wild animals to make a living. Or why they are economically marginalised. Or why Nigeria, the world’s sixth largest exporter of oil, is in such a state of disarray.
Mexican photographer Cartagen setted himself on a bridge crossing the highway of Monterrey and shoot from above pickups taking his countrymen workers to the construction sites.
For nearly 20 years, the women of Benin City, a town in the state of Edo in the south-central part of Nigeria, have traveled to Italy to work in the sex trade. Every year, successful ones recruit younger girls to follow in their steps. Most migrant women, including those who end up in the sex industry, have made a clear decision to leave home and take their chances overseas. They are headstrong and ambitious women who migrate in order to escape conflict, persecution, environmental degradation, natural disasters, and other situations that affect their habitat and livelihood.
Jan Kempenaers Spent three years between 2006 and 2009 to shoot monuments and old buildings from Ex Yugoslaia. Futuristic architectures that attracted millions of visitors after President Tito in 1980 but lately abandoned and forgotten.
In this project you can see how dense is the urbanization in Hong Kong. Focusing only on some parts of the enormous buildings the photographer creates textures of windows and concrete, something that reminds more to a hive than a series of flat.
Always fashinated by new technologies and scientific discoveries, Vincent Fournier produced this series of photos where robots and androids interact with the human being environment. All the (staged) scenes are between science fiction and near future.
'Sochi Singers' has been awarded a World Press Photo Award '12 and Sony World Photography Award '12
The southern Russian city of Sochi lies on the Black Sea. It attracts predominantly Russian holidaymakers who come for a mix of sun, sea, sand and nightlife. Restaurants are plentiful and competition is fierce. In the past decade, Soviet interiors have been mostly replaced by an eclectic mix of Roman, Greek and other unidentifiable cultural elements. Every restaurant employs a regular live musician. From behind a laptop, they blast Russian chansons and popsa into the restaurant through a wall of speakers. This renders any kind of conversation impossible. But that’s not the reason why Russians go to a restaurant.
'Sochi Singers' is part of The Sochi Project, which documents the explosive region around the southern Russian city of Sochi, where the 2014 Winter Olympics will be held.
The role of zoological parks is becoming exponentially important. In many ways, these modern arks are a metaphor for our attitudes toward nature. They are often glaring portrayals of our distorted and disconnected views of the natural world. This group of images examines the landscape-immersion philosophy of current zoos. It is the philosophy that exhibits should be designed to acknowledge the importance and value of natural systems. Visitors to the zoo should be able to associate wild animals with their appropriate wild habitats. I am fascinated by how these replicated, unnatural spaces modeled from nature are rendered as photographic images. The perverse beauty of their forms strike a compelling contrast to the reality they portray.
These spaces, which blur the line between fact and fiction, will be the last stand for many endangered species. This body of work examines these spaces and the paradoxes they create.
Belgravia is of one the richest parts of London. Just as the name of the Porsche brand, Belgravia stands for wealth and high living standard, financial power, potency, and strength.
The typological layout of the photographs picks up on the recurring situation on the streets of Belgravia. Each photos shows a parked Porsche in front of an upper class home with the same fences and doorways. The serial representation of the scene undermines the distinctiveness that usually comes with the possession of a Porsche. Instead of displaying the individuality and taste of its owner, it here dissolves into a reiterated sign emptied out of its original meaning.
Staging the Porsches by night turns them into relict-like pieces integrated in the setting of antiquely adorned columns and spearhead-fences which recall better times.
2087
dailybridgerton
stormborns
yousharknotpass
gummygunk
titsay
origamiaround