Shutter.Stutter

Inspirations for the trip, I’ll be carrying both with me :).

Photo by Alessandra Sanguinetti. Made my heart ache first time I saw it.

I’m pretty bummed to have missed Sally Griffiths’s Kintore Stories exhibition at Blank Space last week, the planets just didn’t align.

Griffiths is a Sydney-based photographer breaking into the fashion photography industry, but it’s her documentary work in the Northern Territory that really catches my eye.

Here is a selection of her work. I love the Australian-ness of the colours and the light, I can feel the heat of the sun when I look at these photos. Beautiful.

Did I mention she’s a talented fashion photographer too?

I’ve blogged about Béatrice de Géa before. She did a photo essay for the NYTimes on in childbirth in Tanzania. I wandered over to her website and found that she has a few stunning bodies of work.

de Géa has a great eye for interesting angles, and her consciousness of space makes me wonder if she was originally trained as a designer - I’m itching to lay some typography over her portraits.

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On the Hillary trail…

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Portraits

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Fashion documentary

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Hurricane Ike

Another beautiful photo documentary piece from the NYTimes. See the complete slideshow here.

Béatrice de Géa is a New York based photographer. I’ve just flicked briefly through her website and there’s some amazing stuff! I’ll be blogging properly about her soon.

I confess I’m an e-newsletter junkie. Any form of vaguely design / photography related newsletter I’ll subscribe to. Afterall, there’s so much content on the web, how convenient it is to skip the browsing and have a nicely packaged slice of it delivered to your inbox?

One newsletter I love is Flak Photo. The email is simple - one photo a day, click if you want to see more. No bombardment of information, and no ads.

I’ve been slowly collecting, so here are my favourites from the past six months.

The Sea. Shane Lavalette.

Parking Lot Palm. David Paul Bayles

Elevation. Reka Reisinger

Justin. Richard Renaldi

Downtown. Matthew Porter

Inspired by Edward Weston 1. Kate Hutchinson

Mike, Kevin, Happy Feet, and Steven. Richard Renaldi

Back (Self-Portrait). Mickey Kerr

Cliffe. Hin Chua

Sunset Park, New York. Debora Mittelstaedt

Kromanns Remise II. Nicolai Howalt

Untitled, 2006. Yann Orhan

Mumur 21. Richard Barnes

Tatiana, Kutztown, Pennsylvania. Lydia Panas

Beth, New York, New York. Richard Renaldi

The Whale Shark Tank, Georgia Aquarium, Atlanta. Kyle Ford

Police Station. Mikhael Subotzky

Spectator, Beaufort West Agricultural Show. Mikhael Subotzsky

Ancient Road (Kodo). Kenraku Sandoh

Untitled (Schimmelreiter). Nina Buesing

Metromart, Perryville, Missouri. Tribble & Mancenido

Untitled (20080629). Noah Kalina

Autumn with Hooded Boy. Tim Georgeson

Peter, Midland, Ontario, Canada. Ben Roberts

Bean Broker Coffee Shop, Chadron, Nebraska. Jake Stangel

I put in my entries today for the 2009 Projections Competition, which is run by ACMP. The two projects I entered were Skin and Yah Yah, check them out on my portfolio.

I went to the awards screening last year and was blown away by the talent. I remember sitting in the audience and deciding that being a finalist in the 2009 Projections was my one year goal. Well, fingers crossed :).

I just had another look at the 2008 entries, and have been inspired anew! Such a high caliber of work - I must share. Below are only snapshots of my favourites. Here’s all the finalists.

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Cara Bowerman - Editorial Category Winner
Deni Ute Muster

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Michael Kai - Commercial Category Winner & Overall Winner
This Side Up

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Wren
Small Stories

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Danny Eastwood
Lest We Forget

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Gemma-Rose Turnbull
Show Us Ya Tits

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Rodney Dekker
Of Droughts and Flood…

I’ve never been a fan of Terry Richardson. Sure, he’s got some original images here and there, but I’ve always been really put off by his photos of crazed / dazed semi-nude females.

I’m not much of a feminist, but somehow he manages to make every woman he shoots look like trash. What’s with that? Don’t even get me started on the American Apparel girls.

Here’s some Richardson standards. I can’t fathom why he’s so popular with the celebrities.

THEN, I discovered Diana Scheunemann. There’s no less nudity in her photographs than in Richardson’s, but while his stuff is bordering on bad porn, her work is sexy with plenty of cheek.

Her female subjects are just as aware of their sexuality, but they are in control of it - not objectified because of it. They play up for the camera, but aren’t afraid to be a little absurd. I think her work is HOT.

And look, she’s into jowling too.

Scheunemann also has an awesome personal project titled Behind My Face. It is a series of self portraits - taken one a day from 1999 to the present. That is 365 portraits x 10 years. A truly amazing body of visual documentation.

I love love love The New York Times, they always have fantastic photo essays. Great Performers by Italian Magnum photographer Paolo Pellegrin, drawing on the recent golden globes hype, is no exception.

Kate Winslet is stunning.

Frank Lagella, star of Frost/Nixon.

Robert Downing Jr, on the set of Sherlock Holmes. Jude Law, unconventionally, plays the bumbling Watson.

Sean Penn

Kat Dennings

Micky Rourke

Penelope Cruz

Brad Pitt

Graham Miller documents quirky suburbia in The Performance of Everyday Life.

I love the characters - they’re ridiculous, but at the same time we recognise a bit of ourselves in them. Well, I do anyway, having grown up in suburbia. I’ve been interested in exploring contemporary Australian suburban life for a while now - mostly from the point of view different ethnic groups. The closes I’ve come so far is my Yah Yah series, on my grandfather.

Katie Orlinsky’s body of work is based mainly in Mexico, where she captures brilliant works of social reportage.

In Mexico, Beyond Gay and Straight is featured in today’s NY Times, and I had to blog about it as her style ties in nicely with Jake Stangel’s in my previous post. The series about ‘muxes’ or transgendered people, and the role they play in society.

I stumbled my way to her website and found an even better series - Life on the Tracks: Central American Migration in Mexico. The use of grainy black and white is stunning.