Almost five years ago when I just started blogging, I discovered Olivia Bee‘s photos and shared them here.  Back then, she was only 14 years old but that didn’t stop her from landing a shoot for Converse.  One thing led to another and when I read about the 19 year old photographer who got to shoot Cacharel’s newest campaign in the newspaper last week, I was curious to discover her latest work.  Her photos are still as dreamy and full of atmosphere as 5 years ago, although this time I made a selection that feels a little bit more natural and spontaneous then the majority of her work, which is often more staged and posted but equally beautiful, although less in line with my taste.

“I strive to capture the ordinary, in an extraordinary way. Life is beautiful, perfect, and cinematic, if you look at the right moments. It’s not always an accurate summary of life in general, but it is those specific moments that make it worth living anyway.”

This quote of hers captures what I love in this selection very well and reminds me of Ryan McGinley‘s work, (who she names as one of her influences and happens to be one of my favorite photographers as well, proof here) but also of what I’m looking for when I have my camera in hand. Continue reading →

Seascapes is a series by Japanese photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto.  In 1980, he began to photograph the sea and its horizon all over the world, with an old-fashioned large format camera and varying exposures.   He describes his work as ‘time exposed’, a time capsule for a series of events in time, in this case up to 3 hours of sea in one image.  If you’ve been following this blog for a while, you know I’m fascinated with seascapes myself (see a selection of mine on the blog here and on flickr here) and these images only add to my obsession.  I find it mesmerizing how water surfaces can look so different each time, how the light changes its colors and how something so beautiful can be so threatening at the same time.

all images by Hiroshi Sugimoto

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About a year ago, Luis (someone I vaguely knew during my erasmus) asked me for some tips on getting started with analog photography.  Somehow I never got around sharing tips (instead we quickly became friends and decided to go on a roadtrip as seen here, here, here and here), but as it turns out he didn’t need any.  The photos he has made in the past year are stunning and I’m always impressed whenever a new image pops up on his tumblr (always accompanied by a beautiful quote and song) or in my mailbox.  It’s about time I shared my favorite images.

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As I mentioned last week, I went to Amsterdam for the opening of the exhibition ‘The Dwarf Empire’.  Sanne De Wilde, who you might remember from this post, visited The Dwarf Empire in the World Ecological Garden of Butterfly, a Chinese theme park that is home to 77 little people who present a song-and-dance show twice a day.  This empire, with its own capital, its own king, Ministry of Foreign Affaires, Ministry of Public Health, Ministry of Finance and Ministry of Culture and its own army, was founded by a tall rich man as a way to provide work and offer a place to live to the little people.  Sanne De Wilde arrived in the park with ethical questions about commercialising social care. Is the park a form of social service, or a kind of modern human zoo? Are the little people happy?  All the answers are contradictory.  As a tall person with blond hair and blue eyes, Sanne soon became a photo opportunity as well and got to experience what it’s like to live in the Dwarf Empire and serve as a photo object, day in, day out.

The exhibition runs until March 14 at Vlaams Cultuurhuis De Brakke Grond in Amsterdam.

For more info, check out the interview by cobra.be (only in Dutch) and click below for more photos.

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