Gabriele Basilico

http://www.galerieannebarrault.com

Alex Majoli

http://www.alexmajoli.com

Nicolas Tikhomiroff

Time For A Change

I have decided to change the format of my blog, there will be less writing and more photographs and other visual stimulation.

Please enjoy.

New Photographers - Jonas Bendiksen

This is a photograph from the series Satellites by Jonas Bendiksen, in which Jonas travel for several years around the old Soviet Union, capturing the world that the tabloids have now forgotten about. He captures great scenes of survival in the fringe countries of the old Soviet Union spanning from Eastern Europe to Central Asian and over to Siberia.

In this photograph Jonas has captured the remnants of the Soviet space program in Kazakhstan being used by the locals as a way to make money to live from day to day without hunger. This is because Kazakhstan is one of the cheapest places in the world to launch space shuttles from and also to crash land as well. Now the residents near the crash sights scavenging the wreckages for titanium and aluminium rich metal alloys that the can then sell on.

What I like about Bendiksens work is the story behind them, taking an event that once had the whole world watching and showing them that even though it is not in the papers or on the news any more, it s still in plain sight that the countries in question are still struggling after so many years. Even if you can't see them on your television or in the tabloids, if you look hard enough they are still in plain sight and are in as much trouble as they were when you last read about the situation.

http://www.jonasbendiksen.com/index.html

Favourite Films - Planet Terror

This is by far one of my favourite films of all time, this due to many reasons. The director Robert Rodriguez is one of my favourite directors out there due to his great style of writing, directing and producing a film. Planet Terror is a great example of the skills Robert Rodriguez has to offer, taking a classic genre and adding his style to it. The reason this is a post about the film and not Rodriguez is because of the "grindhouse" effect Rodriguez wanted for this film. This was because Rodriguez and Tarantino collaborated to make two films that are homage to the lost genre of grindhouse films and theatres, which has unfortunately disappeared thanks to the popularity of cable movie channels and the internet. This is a shame as by the early 90's near on all grindhouse theatres had closed down, which then made this exploitation films no longer needed, which led to the loss of a genre that is by far an underground movement that produced some great cult followings.

The main aspect I like about grindhouse films is the rawness of the quality, the scratches, burn marks and missing reels that the film obtains while it travels from one coast of America to another and the low budget film that is brought for the film due to not having a budget. All these problems give it an effect that give the film more character, this has got me thinking of trying to get this style into my work somehow without using Photoshop to get this raw, unique and almost aged affect to a photograph.