Allison Cashin submits Cang Xin

Cang Xin is a Beijing biased photographer and performance artist.  Xin believes that everything and everyone has a soul be they inanimate or animate.  He communicates harmony through nature by trying to be a person or object.  Xin does these social experiments where he would either swap clothes with strangers in order to become that person.  His concepts may be outlandish but the idea of taking over someone's being is almost like stepping away from your self and coming into another. Amazing. Xin is not the character he is being the character.

 



   

Lauren Pai Submits Jill GreenBerg

Jill Greenberg is a well-established photographer from Detroit. She has alot of portrait commercial work for big companies such as Microsoft, Pixar, and Coca-Cola. She is one of the first photographers to pioneer a lighting technique that creates an "ethereal" back lighting on the subject.

Her series, End Times, features large scale portraits of toddlers crying and distorting their faces in ways that is emotionally unsettling. Her work with the distressed toddlers was a key controversial subject in 2006. The title of the piece reflects the artist's commentary on the Bush Administration and Christian Fundamentalism.

Her work with lighting is exceptional. She adds more dimensionality to the subject by manipulating the lights. As you can see in some of the crying toddlers' eyes, you can count the artist's extensive use of strobes and lighting. I am humored by her work because of how she has placed a distressed toddler under studio lights and captured them in the most emotionally distraught way as possible. When reflecting on the title of the piece, I immediately thought of the rapture and the Christian notion of how the world will end.

http://www.art.jillgreenberg.com/tagged/end-times

Allison Cashin submits Shirin Nashat

Shirin Nashat is an Iranian photographer and film maker.  In the first photo series "Woman of Allah" combines images if women with religious texts.  Nashat pushes the boundaries of taboos in the Islamic culture. I really admire how she takes timid woman and makes them into powerful strong woman.  The way she places Arabic calligraphy makes her figures graceful and effortless.

 

Allison Cashin submits Seydou Keita

Seydou Keita is a self taught photographer form Bamako, Mali.  Keita is mostly known for his portraits of people and families between the 40's and 60's.  His work is a record of the Malian people but also as works of art.  The subjects in Keita's are in generically posed on a simple set but the spirit of the people and their dress warm up the images.

  

Allison Cashin submits Pieter Hugo

Born in Cape Town, South Africa, Pieter Hugo portrays African communities.  In the series "The Hyena and Other Men", Hugo travels with a group called the "Gadawan Kura" or hyena guides.  These men were entertain crowds and sell traditional medicines.  This is actually a tradition has been passed down for generations.  The way Hugo portrays these men does not seem real at all, this image seem more editorial than portrayals of an ancient tradition.  I admire how he captures the exotic and amplifies it to greater heights. 

  

Allison Cashin submits Josef Koudelka

Czech photographer Josef Koudelka emphasizes the death, social and cultural rituals.  Koudelka captures the story of the human spirit through dark landscapes.  His melancholy consepts make the subject into characters rather than real people. In his series "Gypsies", Koudelka document these roaming people during the time of the Soviet invasion in Slovakia and Romania in the late 60's.

  

Allison Cashin submits Martin Klimas

German artist Martin Klimas experiments with motion and the cause and effect in gravity.  The concept of Klimas's photographs is the at a certain point when chaos becomes beauty.  In "Paint with Sound", Klimas puts paint onto a speaker making the paint dance in the are almost like a 3-D Jackson Pollack.  Klimas may have a fun time with destroying objects but the seeing the object before it is destroyed is quite amazing.