Fledgling photographers and imagemakers are ready to bring the world into a whole new focus
Katy Dillon’s series Within Four Walls was inspired by Cold War public service information offering advice on civil defence. ‘The most bizarre guidance claimed that a neat and tidy home would be more likely to survive a nuclear bomb,’ she says. ‘That emphasis on visually enhancing domestic space as a means of survival is the focus of this project.’ www.katydillon.com
While at Parsons, fashion photographer Matthew Shrier secured work as a photographer’s assistant for the likes of Saks Fifth Avenue and Elle. This image from his series Spring was part of a fashion shoot of fellow Parsons student Gamu Moyo’s Amish-inspired menswear collection – hence the big black hat. www.matthewshrier.com
Pauline Miserez’s The Geography of Nowhere series captures something essential about her subjects in the stuff that surrounds them. Of this shot taken in the California home of Dashiell Miller, she says, ‘When I met him I felt he might be somehow lost. Through the mess and colours of the kitchen, I tried to capture some of my observations.’ www.paulinemiserez.ch
Marinka Zsuzsanna Alexandrovna will paint over photographs, scratch them and use unorthodox techniques to change textures and insert or remove layers. ‘With my series Mindless Bodies (pictured), the aim was to elaborate on the image of the body, as I became captivated by its versatility.’ alexandrovnapics.blogspot.hu
Hui Song's work draws on Chinese shan shui ink-painting - literally 'mountains and water' - and lends it a contemporary sociological reading. 'My images visualise the ideological context within the urban landscape,' he says. He is also influenced by Walter Benjamin's notion of the flâneur, as a kind of urban investigator or social observer. 'I've used [Benjamin's concept] as my method of observation. And because the work is 5m long, you're also a flâneur when you experience it.' www.simonsongh.com
Kate Stone says she works within self-imposed parameters, so her images can deconstruct space and rearrange it. 'The resulting compositions rest at the intersection of logic and nonsense, order and disorder, control and chaos, transforming architecture into something almost unrecognisable,' she says. 'They combine the abstract and everyday and attempt to redefine them, but like a word repeated over and over they sever context and meaning, elevating form and material.' www.katestone.net
In her series Heda, Lonneke de Groot examines the transformation of everyday space into photography, making the act of looking at the place we live a conscious one. 'In my photographs reality is manually manipulated, from small interventions in existing places to totally constructed environments,' she says. Often she uses existing visuals as a departure point. www.lonnekedegroot.nl
The ongoing body of work by Scott Alario, called What We Conjure, is an autobiographical story and contemporary folk tale starring his partner, four-year-old child and dog. 'Using an 8x10 camera connects me directly to the history of photography and, specifically, to a history of the family photograph,' he says. 'It's a process I've come to love regardless of how counter-intuitive it may seem amid today's technology.' www.scottalario.com
Tommy Kha's self-portraits question the notion of the artist as protagonist, while examining what he describes as his 'otherness'. 'Using race, regional identity and sexuality, I reexamine my various roles within my work and subvert the idea of the artist as protagonist by inviting others to share the frame with me, allowing others to be the protagonist.' www.tommykha.com
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‘Concrete Dreams’: rethinking Newcastle’s brutalist pastA new project and exhibition at the Farrell Centre in Newcastle revisits the radical urban ideas that changed Tyneside in the 1960s and 1970s
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Mexican designers show their metal at Gallery Collectional, Dubai‘Unearthing’ at Dubai’s Gallery Collectional sees Ewe Studio designers Manu Bañó and Héctor Esrawe celebrate Mexican craftsmanship with contemporary forms
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At The Manner, New York has a highly fashionable new living roomThe Manner, a new hopsitality experience by Standard International in the heart of SoHo, triples up as a hotel, private residence, and members’ club
