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Hester. Photographs by Asger Carlsen. |
Asger Carlsen's modern grotesques are collected in his book Hester published by Morel. The black and white images walk the thin line between disturbing and fascinating, presenting the human body in nightmarish form. Bright flash and mundane backgrounds lend the images a sense of banality that contrasts fiercely with the oddness of their subject matter, triggering an almost overwhelming sense of eeriness. Head and armless bodies appear center frame, balanced on legs or seated, their forms seemingly folding over on themselves in an endless mass of flesh. While traces of a potentially alluring pose remains in these photographs, Carlsen's work subverts the traditional depiction of the female nude, creating something else entirely. They are impossible oddities, yet somehow believable, and beg to be looked at again and again.
Watch the video presentation by Erin Azouz
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| Hester. Photographs by Asger Carlsen. |
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| Hide & Seek. Photographs by Beata Szparagowska. |
Portraits, interiors and landscapes fill the pages of Beata Szparagowska's Hide & Seek. A photographic document of performing artists in residence at L'L in Brussels, Szparagowska's photographs invite speculation while acknowledging the performative nature of their genesis. Performers appear with faces hidden behind a variety of masks, some merely objects obscuring the face. When faces are visible, emotions are palpable yet difficult to parse, and when mixed with the luminous landscapes and interiors, the traces of a narrative seem to emerge.
"With Hide & Seek, Beata Szparagowska goes beyond this theatrical literality and produces something quite different. She mixes the staged with the preparatory and the theatrical, adding elements of the macabre to create her own photographic performance piece." -- Colin Pantall
Read the review by Colin Pantall
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| Hide & Seek. Photographs by Beata Szparagowska. |
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| Mountain Photographer Torahiko. Photographs by Takashi Homma. |
Opening with the story of a chance meeting, Takashi Homma’s Mountain Photographer Torahiko presents a series of photographs ostensibly taken by a former fashion photographer named Torahiko who had tossed that world aside for a life on the mountain. The description of the powerful man sets the stage for the impressive nature of the mountain itself. While the man disappeared, a packet of photographs turned up in Homma’s mailbox, and the haunting photographs seem to be equally an expression of the mountain and the man. The eighteen images fill the pages of the small book creating a poetic series of the bright whites and blue-grays of the landscape. Ice clings to the surface of structures while the play between snow and shadow create an element of abstraction – a firm grasp of the subject matter just barely out of view. Presented in these grainy, painterly photographs, the result is a mysterious landscape that feels larger than life.
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| Mountain Photographer Torahiko. Photographs by Takashi Homma. |