Field Of Vision

Martyn Cross

2012-01-26T13:00:00.009Z

Demented, disconcerting, possessed and more than a little juvenile; Martyn Cross's world is all of these things. Culled from a kitsch panoply of seemingly innocent family photographs, vintage advertising and retro knitwear catalogues, Cross subverts and twists his images by adding streams of vomit, disjointed limbs or satanic symbolism, turning cute children into sinister monsters and loving families into incestuous creeps. Drawn to already sickly-coloured vintage saccharine shots, Bristol-based Cross seems to have an endless supply of found imagery to alter and scar, and whilst the results are admittedly a little gimmicky, the sheer volume of perversions and uncomfortable scenarios he generates suggest a darkly twisted mind at work, and sometimes you cant help laughing at the results.

Does he need our help, or deserve our grudging respect?

Messenger

Totem

Los Amantes

Jaffa Cakes

Title Unknown

Lonely Boy

Guitar Man

Banner

Baby Face

Medium

Suicide Bomber

Original Swear

Black Flag #20

Baby Bell

Backhander

The Hermit Age

Her Loss

Kids

Silhouette

Talismen

All images © Martyn Cross

Sam Falls

2012-01-19T14:37:00.020Z

Finally, time to write something to start 2012.

Sam Falls is a prodigious young American artist, whose work easily weaves between photography, painting, collage and, more recently, sculpture. The work shown here is primarily photographic, at least in the initial stages of the work, but almost all of Falls' prints are worked on in some way after the initial photograph has been taken. Frequently painting on his photographs, Falls builds up layers of hazy, psychedelic colours which blur the depths and details in the images, giving them a hallucinatory feel. These layers also move the final image away from being 'a photograph', and make them multimedia pieces which are invariably unique.

Falls recently relocated to Los Angeles, where David Hockney once lived and produced an iconic body of work, often realised in acid pastels. Think of ' A Bigger Splash' and other works Hockney made on the West Coast in the 60s and 70s, then look at the palette Falls' often uses. In Los Angeles Falls has been making larger abstract works using fabrics which are left to fade and age in the sun, thereby creating epic 'exposure times' which define the finished pieces. Examples can be seen at China Art Objects, on the second page of Falls' work.

Title Unknown

Oranges

Roadside Attraction

Broken And Chopped

Pickin' On Gary Cooper

Title Unknown

Return To The Alps #3

Title Unknown

Spare Tire

Ceramics and Smog

Pickin' On Katherine Hepburn

Untitled (Painted Desert #4)

Study Of Drapery

Girls Like Us (Far Away Eyes)

Brother Old News

Title Unknown

Green Tapes

Girls Like Us

Title Unknown

Study For A Portait of Sam Falls by Lucas Blalock

All images © Sam Falls, except final image, © Lucas Blalock

Amir Zaki

2011-12-14T15:08:00.007Z

A fascinating series shot in 2010, Amir Zaki's 'Relics' show shuttered beach towers, presumably closed during the off-season, making them appear like weird self-contained capsules or miniature elevated mausoleums. Zaki, living and working in Southern California, describes the architecture and surrounding landscape of this part of America as "an evolving bastardization of styles and forms - in other words, a pastiche" and his work explores and attempts to subvert these architectural styles. Perhaps his artist's statement says it best: "The work begins with the familiar, by looking at objects, structures and locations that are often pedestrian and banal. And by capitalizing on the presumed veracity that photographs continue to command, along with the transformative yet invisible digital alterations he employs, his images depict structures that aspire to be added to the list of the hodge-podge, built landscape that creates the Southern California mythology."

So perhaps what we see here are not simply shuttered beach towers, but actually more complicated, altered photographs, with Zaki creating a new and fascinatingly functionless type of building. The reader can decide...

All images © Amir Zaki

Joseph Gartell

2011-11-28T14:53:00.007Z

London-based artist Joseph Gartell has been painstakingly crafting these intricate drawings of animals over the past couple of years. Rendered in pencil and ball-point pen the almost obsessive level of detail is amazing - the Bison image, above, is virtually life size at 2.5m wide and 1.8m tall. Considering that each section is carefully shaded in ball-point, you have to hope Gartell doesn't get Carpal Tunnel! This technique means he manages to capture the sinews, muscles and dynamic movement of each animal he draws, but the results are more stylised than scientific, and owe much to Native American styles.

Eagle

Dolphin

Puma

Turtle

Wolf

Cheetah

A sketch of a work in progress, 'Pronghorn'

All images © Joseph Gartell

Hisaji Hara

2011-11-17T15:35:00.007Z

Often the most interesting photographers are those who have a single-minded obsession with one subject, relentlessly exploring it and pushing themselves within certain parameters. Hisaji Hara is one such photographer who has created a beautiful series of photographs that painstakingly recreate the paintings of Balthus, the revered Polish-French painter who died in 2008.

Hara's work, until recently rarely seen outside Japan, was one of the gems at this year's revamped Paris Photo fair. Remaining faithful to Balthus's original compositions, Hara's careful casting and beautifully lit modern reinterpretations of the settings make for a really unique series of photographs. The photographs are initially disconcerting, appearing vintage with their impeccable, cinematic lighting and sepia tones, but the modern flourishes make the viewer look again. Below are a couple of Balthus's paintings alongside Hara's photograph for comparison.

At present Hara seems uninterested in photographing outside of his obsession, but surely its only a matter of time before a forward-thinking fashion brand or magazine collaborates with him using his unique approach to create something special.

Whilst paintings have unquestionably influenced photographers since the medium's first days, its rare for a photographer to dedicate himself solely to a project this reverential. Guido Mocafico notably produced a stunning series of still life works - Nature Morte - which were exhibited seamlessly alongside Old Masters at the Bernheimer gallery in London in 2008. But Hara seems to be attempting something even more ambitious, almost trying to become Balthus with his camera. In fact in the final image shown here, he poses as the great painter in a self portrait homage.

Portrait of Therese, 1956 by Balthus

Le Salon I (1941-43) by Balthus

David Favrod

2011-11-09T13:44:00.009Z

Born to a Japanese mother and a Swiss father, David Favrod is a young, gifted photographer whose work explores his sense of dual nationality and identity through staged dramatic scenes and lyrical, nostalgic landscapes and still life tableaux.

Whilst still a young boy, Favrod's family left Japan for a small village in Lowers Valais in Switzerland, where, he explains: "my father had to travel for his work a lot, so I was brought up by my mother who taught me her principles and her culture." With his fascinating series 'Gaijin' (meaning foreigner in Japanese) he set about creating "my own Japan in Switzerland, from memories of my journeys when I was small, my mother's stories...and my grand parents' war narratives." The portraits range from haunting, beautifully lit set-ups with characters in traditional Kabuki make-up to more startling and unexpected scenarios, like a masked naked man emerging from a lake or a noosed man staring from a bath. Favrod says these portraits are "a tool for my quest for identity, where self-portraits imply an intimate and solitary relationship that I have with myself." The colour palette in his photographs is usually a mix of warm Autumnal colours - greens, browns and blues with hits of red, and when seen with the still life work and the landscapes, the whole series has real power and poignancy.

For someone so young - he graduated from ECAL this year - Favrod already has a mature and distinctive style and we'll be interested to see how his career and vision evolves. Below are examples from the 'Gaijin' series.

All images © David Favrod

Jean Baptiste

2011-10-20T12:41:00.006+01:00

Showing the evolution of simple, strong natural leaf-forms, and man-made geometric patterns, these plates were drawn in 1896 by Jean Baptiste to explore and explain symmetries and repetitions. With their pared-down simplicity and muted palettes they are strangely undated, and still a fascinating source of inspiration.

John Lehr

2011-10-05T13:44:00.013+01:00

A strange lexicon of crumpled, discarded and damaged American advertising billboards and slipped suburban typefaces are what fascinates photographer John Lehr. He crafts compelling, poetic images from the mistakes and the unloved - the peeling adhesive, the slipped letter and the abandoned building or unwashed car are all recognised as objects of beauty in themselves through his lens. His shrewd eye and interesting compositions make the viewer reappraise objects and debris they've probably walked past without noticing on a daily basis. With the isolated details of junk food billboards there's a nod to the Pop iconography of artists like James Rosenquist, but with his understanding of colour, Lehr's work is more like a strange and compelling collision of photographic legend William Eggleston's irreverence, and Italian artist Mimmo Rotella's carefully salvaged ripped vintage posters.

Neon Rose, 2010

Nuggets, 2008

Billboard Detail, Norfolk, CT, 2005

Ripped Billboard, Maryland, 2006

Neptune, NJ, 2007

Untitled, 2005

2467, 2010

Wipe, 2010

Burger King, Connecticut, 2005

Bank, 2010

Gibberish, 2010

Crumpled Cheeseburger Sign, 2008

All images © John Lehr

Michael Leavitt

2011-09-22T14:00:00.012+01:00

Seattle-based artist Michael Leavitt has created this fairly brilliant series of figurines of titans of the art world, 'The Art Army Royalty'. Leavitt makes the figures from scratch, customising each one so it not only looks like the artist in question, but reflects some of their best-known work. It was only a matter of time before artists themselves became objects of art available for purchase, but you can't help liking what Leavitt has created, since these aren't grandiose bronze busts but posable polymer figures. Interesting to know what the artists themselves think of their caricatures.....

David Hockney

Lucien Freud

Takashi Murakami

Jasper Johns

Gerhard Richter

Cy Twombly

Damien Hirst

Kara Walker

James Turrell

Ellsworth Kelly

Chuck Close

Claes Oldenburg

Cindy Sherman

Jeff Koons

Frank Stella

Ed Ruscha

Barbara Kruger

Tom Sachs

Ai Wei Wei

All images © Michael Leavitt, courtesy of Jonathan LeVine Gallery

Roe Ethridge part 2

2011-09-15T10:51:00.013+01:00

Roe Ethridge is in the enviable position right now of being feted by the art world for his increasingly conceptual photographic explorations, and shooting distinctive fashion work for some of the more prestigious periodicals. FOV first took a look at Ethridge's work in October 2009, and since then he seems to have converted more and more people to his slightly slanted vision. Its particularly interesting to see how his recent fashion work has evolved, maintaining a weirdness and tension through considered casting - the models are often beautiful but unconventional - and unexpected poses and props. Magazines like Another, Dazed & Confused and Muse are a natural home for this carefully crafted marriage of style, irony and luxury. Below are some of our favourites from recent shoots (and yes, the b&w image is supposed to be on its side).

Its not for everyone - the faux naiveté of some of his images can grate, and the New Yorker's influential photo critic Vince Aletti remains unconvinced - but in these increasingly trying times, Ethridge's uneasy but compelling images, and his almost neo-Conceptual approach, seem to be the apotheosis of cool.

All images © Roe Ethridge

Jessica Eaton

2011-09-02T10:46:00.012+01:00

An unforeseen fascination with sizzling, bold, graphic and sometimes abstract experimentation on FOV at the moment with recent posts.

More interesting, progressive work in a similar vein from young Canadian photographer Jessica Eaton. Her work explores what photography is and can be, looking at the themes of light, time and spatial relations. Creating images of geometry and colour that play with the viewers perceptions, all Eaton's images are created in-camera. No post at all. Which is pretty impressive, especially with the photographs toward the bottom of this page - undoubted homages to Josef Albers and Victor Vasarely - a couple of which look almost entirely computer-generated. The experimental colour photographic work of James Welling seems to have spurred a generation of young photographers to experiment with what can be achieved with the medium, and Eaton is pushing things in an interesting direction, along with peers such as Caleb Charland and Niall McClelland. When she works, she has no clear defined final image in mind when she begins each series, instead setting out with an idea of what the outcome may be, but going with the flow. As she says, "each time I shoot, the results influence the next step. I often like to leave a lot of space for accidents to happen and am most satisfied with the work when it takes on a life of its own." It seems that she is only just beginning to touch on what can be achieved, and we're going to watch her evolution with interest.

Below are a selection of images, not chronological, but showing an evolution of style. And the final shot is something of a reveal, showing one of her studio set-ups.

All images © Jessica Eaton

Michiel Schuurman

2011-08-03T16:04:00.008+01:00

An eyeball-popping collision of Op-Art, Vasarely, psychedelia, offset printing and experimental type, Dutch designer Michiel Schuurman's work is not for purists or the hungover. Schuurman studied typography at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague and the Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam, proving grounds of some of Europe's finest graphic designers.

Describing posters - the main area of his work - as 'the ultimate two dimensional challenge'. Schuurmann says that 'how sparrows swarm, how the waves in water are created and how light breaks' all influence his designs.

Click on the images to see them large and be dazzled.

All images © Michiel Schuurmann

Carl Kleiner

2011-07-21T12:05:00.012+01:00

Carl Kleiner has a big buzz around him at the moment. He seems to epitomise a recent move towards an 'old-fashioned' approach to still life photography, which eschews any slick post-production in favour of simple but clever ideas executed in-camera whenever possible. Its sort of a return to basics; a revolt against computer generated trickery.

Based in Stockholm, Kleiner creates subtle, vaguely surreal compositions, his use of colour being his real forté. Whether its subtle hits that elevate an otherwise dark composition, or full-on technicolour collisions (as with his geometric paper work), his awareness of colour theory and the resulting combinations always please the eye. He also shoots more ambitious and involved work with bigger sets, sometimes working with models too, but its his still life work that we're really appreciating right now. See below for a selection of his recent work.

All images © Carl Kleiner

Mark Anstendig

2011-06-21T16:31:00.013+01:00

Tempting as it was to write a near-fictitious post about photographer Mark Anstendig, ultimately that wouldn't be fair to him. Its just that much of his work feels so now that, with many of the images shown here, he could easily be a contemporary of David Benjamin Sherry, Roe Ethridge or Ryan McGinley. The weirdness, the choice of subjects, the experimentation. In fact Mr Anstendig, something of a maverick and eccentric, has been around a long time, and shooting since the early 1970s. According to his own biography he's not only a professional photographer but also a trained orchestra conductor. In fact thats just the start of it. His life and achievements are definitely above and beyond the ordinary, and to try and summarise them here seems disingenuous, so read the vita on his own website for the full story after revelling in the power and prescience of his strange images.

All images © Mark Anstendig

Mark Ruwedel

2011-06-15T11:09:00.018+01:00

Begun in 1994, photographer Mark Ruwedel's epic series 'Westward the Course of Empire' charts the course of the vast measure of abandoned railroads that weave across America, and which once epitomised the industrial prowess and ambition of a country in fine health. The seemingly inevitable consequences of industrial expansion and cheaper ways of transporting freight or people led to the demise of much of the railroad infrastructure. Time and the elements have now taken their toll, and these railroads now appear like scars (some more faded than others) on the landscape. Ruwedel uses an 8" x 10" plate camera to record the inevitably bleak scenes he encounters, but his camera captures a strange beauty in these scenes nonetheless. Inevitably by choosing The American Landscape for such a long-term project Ruwedel places himself in the shadow of giants such as Carleton Watkins and Ansel Adams. But what he captures in his shots, whilst often mundane at first glance, acknowledges their legacy whilst showing an awareness of much more recent endeavours by artists such as Richard Long, with his interventions in remote wilderness, or the endlessly-influential Bechers and their repetitive documentation of variations on the same theme. Ruwedel even chooses to show his prints as the Bechers did, in grids of small prints which emphasise the similarities and variations of the epic West.

Kettle Valley #44, 2000

Tonopah and Tidewater #25, 2002

Denver and Rio Grande Western #7, 1996

Tonopah and Tidewater #6, 1995

Spokane Portland and Seattle #31, 1998

Kettle Valley #21, 1999

Central Pacific #18, 1994

Columbia and Western #8, 1999

Camas Prairie #20, 2006

Columbia and Western #20, 2000

Deep Creek #2, 1999

Picacho and Colorado River #3, 2000

Oregon-Washington Railroad and Navigation #13, 2000

Installation view

All images © Mark Ruwedel/Yossi Milo Gallery

Lil Buck & Yo-Yo Ma

2011-05-11T11:29:00.006+01:00

Trust Spike Jonze, the polymath, film-maker and provocateur, to come up with the idea of putting virtuoso cellist Yo-Yo Ma and Memphis Jook dance prodigy Lil Buck together for an unexpected and beautiful collaboration for Opening Ceremony.

Click the link to watch: http://www.openingceremony.us/entry.asp?pid=3238

Anyone smitten by the fluid beauty seen in the Turf Feinz street dance films will be swept away by this.

The cello becomes audible after 45 seconds or so...

Stefan Ruiz

2011-04-14T16:21:00.074+01:00

Finally, some time to write something fuller: a long-overdue post on American photographer Stefan Ruiz. Talented, knowledgeable and humble, Ruiz has been shooting for around twenty years now, crafting a pared-down, distinctive and influential style, especially with his editorial work. I'm sure readers who follow photography are familiar with at least some of his images.

Ruiz has had a fascinating career. As a student he studied painting and sculpture at the University Of California; after that, he began working at San Quentin State Prison, teaching art therapy to some of the prison's most dangerous inmates in the mid 90s. In at the deep end. As he taught, Ruiz became increasingly fascinated by his pupils, and, having gained their trust, he began to take their portraits, using a very simple, formal style using a 4"x 5" plate camera, an approach which he has continued to use throughout his career. This approach requires participation, collaboration and patience on the subject's part, and the resulting portraits have a real seriousness and gravitas, and a sense of respect for the subject is implicit in his portraits. An art history student, the influence of the formal portraits of Italian Renaissance painters such as Piero della Francesca was apparent in his work from the start.

Drawn more towards photography than teaching, Ruiz collated his prison portraits into a crude portfolio which he showed to art directors and photo editors (long before the advent of laptops, when hand prints from negs were the norm). Based on the strength of this series Shubhankar Ray, who was to become a long-term collaborator, gave Ruiz his first serious commission, to shoot a campaign for Caterpillar workwear in a similar uncompromising style. The campaign, which met with acclaim, gave Ruiz confidence in his style and approach, so he left his role at San Quentin to shoot full time, and when Ray moved to the Spanish shoe company Camper, the two collaborated again on an iconic series of campaigns which helped cement both their reputations. The irreverent subjects - both people and places - made for a droll, award-winning campaign, and showed that Ruiz had an eye for the unexpected and the poetic with his architecture and landscape work too.

Ruiz became Creative Director of Colors magazine in 2003, where he shot stories for the magazine as well as commissioning a generation of younger photographers whose work explored similar themes to his own. He also steered the magazine away from its previously controversial and confrontational aesthetic, and gave it a more serious and considered feel.

Since moving on from there in 2004 he has shot numerous campaigns and editorials (including various in-depth travelogues on Central and South American cities, including Sao Paolo, Rio, Lima, Bogota and Medellin) and also worked on serious long-term personal projects. No doubt influenced by his Mexican parentage, one such project is his 'Factory Of Dreams' series, exploring the world of Mexican Telenovelas, the soaps that grip most of the Mexican population and elevate the lead actors to the status of national heroes and idols. The series is due to be released as a book in 2012.

Below are just some of his photographs from the last 15 years, which really only scratch the surface of what he is about. Readers interested in finding out more about Stefan should look at his own website, www.stefanruiz.com, and those with a spare 20 minutes should definitely watch the recent VBS Picture Perfect special where Ruiz talks about his life and work in depth.

Astana, Kazakhstan, 2006

Colombian Fashion Week, Medellin, Colombia, 2009

Salton Sea, USA, 1999

Santiago, Chile, 2005

David Byrne, New York, 2010

Amy Jo Hubbard, Miss Rodeo Wyoming 2004, Las Vegas, USA 2004

The Baiterek, Astana, Kazakhstan, 2007

Hyrdo-electric plant, Medellin,Colombia, 2009

'Amarte Ed Mi Pecado', Televisa Studios, Mexico City, Mexico, 2003

Almaty, Kazakhstan, 2006

?uestlove, New York, date unknown

Bogota, Colombia, 2007

'El Pirata', Mexico, 2003

Halifax, Canada, 2006

Sports centre, Medellin, Colombia, 2009

Bernard, Lukole Refugee Camp, Tanzania, 2000

Lukole Refugee Camp, Ngara, Tanzania, 2000

San Cristobal, Lima, 2007

Kaydee Nelson, Miss Rodeo Utah 2004, Las Vegas, USA, 2004

Phe Ruiz, San Francisco, USA, 2002

James Brown, Aiken Country, USA, 2002

Jenna Jameson, Scottsdale, USA, 2004

Naples, Italy, 2002

La Paz, Bolivia, 2003

Narcotecture, Bogota Colombia, 2007

Balu Deshak, Madhaya Pradesh, India, 2002

Atlas Mountains, Morocco, 2001

Almaty, Kazakhstan, 2006

Narcotecture, Bogota Colombia, 2007

Rene Vallejo Psychiatric Hospital, Camaguey, Cuba, 2001

Pan Americana Highway, Peru, 2005

Nezahualcoyotl, Mexico City, Mexico 2003

Ouarzazate, Morocco, 2001

Night club, Medellin, Colombia, 2009

Medellin, Colombia, 2009

Liza Minelli, NYC, USA, 2002

Marat Kozhagaliev, Almaty, Kazakhstan, 2006

Medellin, Colombia, 2009

All images © Stefan Ruiz

Marton Perlaki

2011-03-24T16:01:00.011Z

A post in haste. Lots of images, a few words.

Marton Perlaki - young, Hungarian and already with a distinctive, mesmeric style, is obviously a photographic talent to watch. A regular contributor to The Room, the standout Hungarian fashion title, in the model Valejira he already seems to have found his muse too. Enjoy.

All images © Marton Perlaki

Vinaròs Microcoasts

2011-03-16T15:07:00.008Z

Taking first prize in a Spanish competition in 2007 with this innovative project, Barcelona-based Guillart Architects created these striking wooden platforms based around hexagons, allowing local residents of Vinaròs to use the coastline around their town more freely.

Roughly halfway between Barcelona and Valencia, Vinaròs has a sparkling sea and a beautiful coast filled with coves, promontories and inlets, but instead of any welcoming beaches there's only rough and unforgiving rock strata. Not ideal for a Sunday picnic with the family.

Choosing the standout spots close to the ocean, Guillart Architects set simple hexagonal grids into the rock, which were then covered with timber panels which can be positioned flat, partially or fully folded, creating their own 'microtopographies'. Stunning as pieces of sculpture in their own right, these platforms were quickly embraced by the locals whose sunbathing activities had for years been a jagged and painful experience.

Sun Moon Lake visitor centre

2011-03-02T14:51:00.006Z

Japanese architecture firm Norihiko Dan and Associates recently designed this striking visitor and admin centre at the Sun Moon Lake, the largest body of water in Taiwan. The lake is one of the country's biggest tourist attractions, and an island that sits in the middle called Lalu is even considered sacred by the indigenous Thao tribe. The new visitor centre is an amazing, sinuous design, which slopes gently upward from the landscape on one side, rising to face the water on two different levels with a long curving balcony with amazing views over the water. The functional, brutal concrete is grassed over on the roof, but the contrast of this staple building material, set against the lush green countryside and the clear water in this incredible setting make for a very special project.

Click on the images to see them larger - the final one in particular is worth a closer look.

Anne de Vries

2011-02-22T14:07:00.014Z

“The idea of photography as a way to experience the world as it is not - in different ways - is fascinating to me, transforming the known into an unknown.” So says Dutch photo artist Anne de Vries, and looking at the wealth of ideas and experimentation on show in the work you can see he's a man of his word. Whether playing with overlaid identical images which he cuts sections out of, thus revealing more of the same image on different deeper levels, or photographing the reflection of cave paintings in wrinkled aluminium foil, de Vries is out to see how far can an image be pushed whilst leaving it readable. He takes great delight in finding ways of subverting apparently straightforward images, as with the impossible flora in 'Plan' or the melting saccharin junk food in 'Eye Candy'.

As well as rephotographing images, de Vries has begun to experiment more with digital possibilities, such as the moving image collaboration with musician James Whipple, Forecast. Take a look.

From 'A vs B', with Billy Rennkamp

From the 'Cave 2 Cave' series

Group Face

Accumulations

From 'A vs B', with Billy Rennkamp

Infinite Value

From the 'Modern Unpromised' series

Plan

From the 'Cave 2 Cave' series

Eye Candy, with Janis Ponisch

Daniel Aires Grazina

2011-02-03T13:59:00.008Z

ECAL, the art school in Lausanne, Switzerland, is a formidable proving ground for talented young Swiss creatives, and Pierre Fantys, the Head of the Photography Department there, has helped mould and polish a generation of fascinating and inventive photographers. Daniel Aires Grazina is one of the most interesting graduates from last year, and true to ECAL form, much of his imagery involves elaborately constructed dioramas and fantasies. The Nature Humaine series, shown here in colour, is Grazina's attempt to create idealised natural scenes within an obviously domestic environment. The cascading waterfall surrounded by verdant ferns tumbling out of kitchen units, or the miniature sand-swept Monument Valley discovered in the corner of a room hint at utopias found in the most unlikely places at home, a meeting of the banal and the picturesque.

The black and white series, showing inventive destinies for the most mundane objects, is from a collaboration with fellow ECAL graduate Charles Negre, another interesting talent whose work explores fantastical scenarios in the most unexpected places.

From Le Cabinet, 2010, with Charles Negre

From the Nature Humaine series

From Le Cabinet, 2010, with Charles Negre

From the Nature Humaine series

From Le Cabinet, 2010, with Charles Negre

From the Nature Humaine series

Maurizio Anzeri

2011-01-27T14:16:00.019Z

Who would have thought there was a way to make String Art interesting and relevant in this day and age? There was an era in the Seventies when nearly every house had some sort of geometric wall-hanging made from string or thread - endless repeated lines overlaid on fabric panels. Thankfully, they seemed to disappear from walls around the mid-Eighties as tastes changed. Italian artist Maurizio Anzeri uses this retro technique in his work, painstakingly embroidering intricate shapes over found vintage photographs, creating haunting and disturbing 'portraits'. The vintage prints only add to the other-worldliness of the images.

Talking about his work, Anzeri says "Photographs from the 40s and 50s have a totally different quality from photos we’re used to today. We don’t recognise them as photographs now, they really look like watercolours or drawings. I’ve been collecting old photographs for a long time. A few years ago I was doing ink drawings with them and out of curiosity I stitched into one. I work a lot with threads and hand stitching, and the link to photography was a natural progression. I put tracing paper over the photo and draw on the face until it develops. Sometimes the image comes straight away, suggested by a detail on a dress or in the background, but with the majority of them I spend a lot of time drawing. Once the drawing is done, I pierce the photo with a set of needle-like tools I invented and take the paper away; the holes are obsessively paced at the same distance to convey an idea of geometry. When I begin the stitching something else happens, drawing will never do what thread will."

The way Anzeri re-appropriates vintage photos is not dissimilar to John Stezaker's work, and there are echoes (but none of the torment) of the singular vision of Francis Bacon with the weird distortion and blur of the subjects, but he has found an interesting way of making a photograph - something usually associated with numbered print-runs and editions - into a singular, fascinating object.

Priscilla, 1940, 2008

Edward, 1943, 2009

Title unknown

Title unknown

Zelda, 1941, 2009

Round Midnight, 2009

Title unknown

Penny, 2009

Giovanni, 2009

Title unknown

Lucas Foglia

2011-01-17T15:18:00.012Z

New Year, new talent:

Having only graduated from Yale last year, Lucas Foglia's work is ridiculously confident and mature for someone who's only twenty seven. Foglia has realised two serious projects, Re-Wilding and Between Mountain And Mines, which look at two different types of rural American life. Re-Wilding follows people who've made a conscious effort to leave the modern world, and quit towns and cities to live a more pastoral existence off the grid in parts of Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee. His shots, beautifully composed, show amazing scenes of this modern rural life, from women learning to shoot rifles, to kids milking cows, to dead animals lying slain in the woods. Riveting, moving and sometimes sinister, Re-Wilding is a great achievement. The photographs feel part-documentary, part Crewdson-esque complicated set up, and the viewer is not entirely sure if what they are seeing is true. Foglia says this of his working process: "I take candid photographs, but often ask my subjects to hold still or alter their actions for the sake of a better visual image. I also work collaboratively with my subjects to recreate events that I have observed, occasionally re-photographing and compositing different images. My process of making images varies; what matters to me is the form and content of the final image"

Between Mountains And Mines explores communities based in Wyoming in one of the largest areas of undeveloped land in the Unites States. Foglia once more captures some images of real beauty in a harsh environment, showing an understanding eye for his subjects who have chosen to live somewhere where wilderness and the indutrial world meet.

There's many parallels in both series, showing intrepid types who have chosen a more difficult but perhaps more rewarding way of living today. Foglia has found fertile subject matter in these modern day pioneers, and it will be interesting to see where he turns his camera next.

From the Re-Wilding series

From the Between Mines And Mountains series

From the Re-Wilding series

From the Between Mines And Mountains series

From the Re-Wilding series

Mike Mandel

2010-12-22T11:21:00.014Z

In 1975 photographer Mike Mandel embarked on a rather brilliant project: to satirise the then-new phenomenon of the fine art photography community being consumed by the larger art world and commercial culture in general. To do this he travelled around America with a bunch of baseball paraphernalia - caps, gloves, bats, masks and more - and photographed as many of his colleagues as he could persuade, kitted-out and posing as baseball players. He then produced trading cards of these Baseballer-Photographers, complete with stats on the reverse of the cards, and sold them in packs complete with a stick of gum through galleries and museums throughout the country. The stats listed - along with more conventional details like weight and height - categories such as 'favourite camera' and 'favourite film'.

Mandel got some real heavyweights to participate in this project - legends like Ansel Adams, Imogen Cunningham, Harry Callahan, Ed Ruscha, Manuel Alvarez Bravo, Minor White, Lewis Baltz and Duane Michals are all 'at bat' - and the resulting series is unexpected, hilarious and also very cool.

Ironically, whilst Mandel set out to satirise the commercialisation of fine art photography, these cards - especially a complete set - are now extremely rare and sought-after collectors' items in their own right.

A couple of years after this project, Mandel went on to cement his reputation as a conceptual force in photography when he created Evidence with Larry Sultan, one of the seminal art photography projects of the Twentieth Century.

Patrick Hruby

2010-12-16T14:51:00.006Z

Patrick Hruby's saturated silkscreens are a weird blend of the occult and the psychedelic, looking like the visions of a shaman with deft Illustrator skills. Based in LA, Hruby's work centres around natural forms, plants, creatures and faces, in sometimes-sickly acid colours, often overprinted to rich effect. They feel like a modern take on California psychedelia, with some similarity to the work of the Mission School artists, especially Clare Rojas.

Hruby has done commercial work for clients such as Urban Outfitters - creating a typeface for them - and also has a line of retro-looking tableware, but its when he lets the darker side of his imagination run wild that he seems to create his most interesting work.

Eye Of The Forest

Twins

Tiger Trifecta

Cheshire Plant

Spider

Portrait Of My Father As A Falcon

Ice Flower

Fish-Of-The-Sea

Phillip Low

2010-12-08T14:15:00.006Z

Vancouver-born, London-schooled, Manhattan-based; Phillip Low is an artist who creates beautiful, simple geometric forms from acrylic which you feel compelled to handle, hold to the light and admire.

Trained as a fashion stylist, and a graduate of the redoubtable St Martin's School of Art, Low pulled together various creative ideas he had been exploring - accessories, plastics, fine art - and started producing these handmade, mesmerising pieces. Working with live perspex and acrylic, he carefully handcrafts the forms so that they glow and radiate different colours when viewed from different angles. These are objects that demand and reward interaction.

Available from Maryam Nassir Zadeh in New York, Low has also produced a series of limited prints of a few of photographer Uday Kak's stiking images of the trapezoids.

Turf Feinz

2010-12-02T13:56:00.003Z

Four members of the legendary Turf Feinz crew from Oakland moving, dancing, twisting...turfing...in the rain.

Watch in full-screen in awe.

Sofia Sanchez & Mauro Mongiello

2010-11-26T14:05:00.019Z

Sofia and Mauro are an Argentinian duo who create sharp, quirky and sexy fashion stories for numerous glossy editorial titles. Numero in particular has been a great forum for them, and they've contributed main fashion stories to almost every issue for years now.

The duo (once a married couple, but now separated yet still the closest of friends) explore many different themes and ideas of female sexuality in their work, managing to explore fetishes and fantasies that are provocative without ever being crass or explicit. They also realise interesting and intimate portraits, but its their fashion work that really stands out.

Photographic duos seem increasingly prevalent, and their working dynamic is often complicated - sometimes one will style and have the ideas whilst the other concentrates more on the technical side of capturing the pictures. Sofia and Mauro prefer to take it in turns to shoot, Mauro starting and shooting for 2-3 minutes, then stepping back whilst Sofia starts working with her camera. They talk and discuss what's working and what's not whilst they're shooting, then take a break and agree on whether they have got the shot. Later, they'll edit the images together and agree, almost unerringly, on which is their strongest image.

Shown below is a selection of some of their standout images from the last few years.