|
Showing 1 - 4 of
4 matches in All Departments
In The Intimacy of Making Swiss French photographer Helene Binet
takes us on a visual journey through a world of stone, walls and
gardens that define and celebrate the Korean art of making. In pure
and calm photographs we discover traditional Korean architecture
through a Western lens. The purity of the motifs sharpens one's eye
for the often-overlooked beauty and harmony in our own environment
and history, as well as for the care of craft and composition. This
book is a reminder against our often fleeting and careless
perceptions. In her photographs, which were taken over the course
of the last three years, Binet looks at three typologies of
traditional architecture in Korea: the Confucian school and sacred
place Byeong- san Sewon; garden and tea house Soswaewon; and the
Jongmyo Shrine. Her camera combines both the nature and the built
structures and reveals the soul of the three sites. The
photographic essays are accompanied by two texts: Korean architect,
Byoung Soo Cho, offers insight into the cultural and architectural
history, while art and design critic and teacher, Eugenie Shinkle,
focuses on the "making."
In the 1890s, Berlin artist, sculptor and teacher Karl Blossfeldt
started to photograph plants, seeds and other illustrative material
from nature for the purpose of teaching his students about the
patterns and designs found in natural forms. His close-ups of the
smallest plant parts, magnified up to thirty times their natural
size, are startling as the plants appear geometric and sculptural.
Published in 1928, his first collection of photographs Urformen der
Kunst (later translated into English as Art Forms in Nature) became
an international bestseller and remains one of the most significant
photo books of the twentieth century. Karl Blossfeldt: Variations
is the first book-length monograph to examine the reception of
Blossfeldt's work. Drawing on unpublished materials, it analyzes
the photographs' replication in teaching mate- rials, pattern books
and art books, and also in the pages of the illustrated press. The
six chapters of the richly illustrated study trace the paths
Blossfeldt's legendary plant motifs described as specimens,
illustrations, patterns, analogues, models and abstractions from
1890 to 1945. Thematic excursions into the present, illustrating
the rediscovery of Blossfeldt's motifs in design and architecture
over the past twenty years, offer a contemporary perspective on the
famous German photographer.
In the context of the World Economic Forum (WEF), an absurd
practice has emerged in Davos over the last few years: for the
short time of the event, the main street is almost entirely
rebuilt. Thus, a pop-up industry has grown up that generates an
enormous short-term demand for reusable spaces, blank walls and
empty rooms. The street scene of the alpine city is altered in
favor of the self-representation of companies, corporations and
organizations. The existing infrastructure is transformed, at
horrendous prices, into a space of communication for the respective
agenda. In his most recent series Davos Is a Verb, the Swiss photo
artist Jules Spinatsch focuses on something that is typical of
events around the world: the temporary appropriation of local
spaces and infrastructures by major international corporations. In
view of the debates over the WEF's future, this photobook gains its
relevance and presents itself as a contemporary witness of the WEF
in Davos. By using photo-essayistic, conceptual and investigative
artistic strategies, Spinatsch documents the aesthetics and actions
of the financial, technological and new media industries as well as
the various political agents. The British ecological economist Tim
Jackson, known for his critical attitude towards growth, comments
on the hegemonic practices in Davos and the world in an extensive
essay.
Advertising creates dream worlds, yet always simultaneously bears
witness to its era. Both these tendencies are exemplified in
fashion posters. Moving beyond the latest modish trends and beauty
ideals, fashion posters reflect moral codes and social conditions.
In particular, they pander to the longing to escape routine
everyday life, for these posters suggest that it is possible to
attain a completely new identity simply by opting for a different
garment or style. Androgynous models and less normative images of
men and women in the advertising industry mark the dawn of a new
era that entails constantly balancing aspirations to individuality
against a sense of collective belonging. Fashion posters from past
and present are lifestyle propositions; they tell stories, seduce
and shock. Playing with convention and provocation, bodies are
sometimes lavishly veiled and disguised, sometimes sensually
staged. At times consumers are only indirectly encouraged to shop.
A button or a coat collar as a pars pro toto illustrate product
quality in historical posters. A new, somewhat controversial
approach to fashion advertising emerges in Benetton campaigns from
the early 1990s. Overtly erotic ostentation contrasts with poetic
allusions that are for example the hallmark of highly aesthetic
Japanese fashion posters. En Vogue brings together fashion
advertising spanning roughly a hundred years and deploying myriad
different PR strategies, in each case reflecting the cultures and
periods in which it was created.
|
|