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Visual Bits #439 > Creating Serenity: Architecture
The Dreamlike Self-Portraits of Dancer Ingrid Endel
Creative people have an innate need for an outlet to express themselves; for Ingrid Endel that channel was found through dance. However after multiple knee injuries, her dance career was brought to a halt after training for twelve years. It is then that she turned to photography to express her emotions and has found a way to utilize her polished dance poses to create stunning, conceptual self-portraits. Though her injuries may prevent her from starring in Swan Lake, she has found a way, just as elegant, to showcase her grace, strength, emotion, and creativity through her pictures. Her struggles to find joy again after her dreams of dancing were shattered are expressed beautifully in this ethereal photo series, which takes place in nature. [Read more...]
The Body in Nature: Unusually Beautiful Photographs
Photographing the nude is just about as old as the camera itself… from cheesy pinups to surreal body landscapes, the form has been explored in just about every way imaginable. That’s why, when I ran across the work of Arno Rafael Minkkinen I was truly blown away. His work is filled with almost magical abstract forms created using just creatively positioned figures in the landscape and his well placed lens… nothing more. Each photograph is a revelation, something to decipher for its mysterious form and appreciate for its lyrical beauty. [Read more...]
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Glowing Lamps in the Norwegian Woods
Just imagine walking through the woods at twilight – the shapes of the forest beginning to merge as night sets in – and then coming upon a brilliant cluster of table lamps illuminating the glen in your path. Their beautiful yet eerie light fills the woods with a glow that brilliantly plays with the dim natural scene all around, and if you imagine hard enough, you might think you were in Alice in Wonderland or surrounded by strange terrestrial jellyfish. [Read more...]
The Wildlife Whisperer: A Young Girl’s Life in Africa
IF you’ve ever read or seen The Jungle Book and fantasized what it might be like to have all those animal friends like Mowgli, then you will love this collection from a real life version of the story in Africa. As the daughter of French wildlife photographers Alain Degré and Sylvie Robert, Tippi Degré grew up fearless of animals, as she was surrounded by many. Born in Namibia, her parents were in the Kalahari for 7 years filming and photographing meerkats and also beautifully documented Tippi’s childhood. As a young girl, she is recorded saying, “I don’t have friends here because I never see children. So the animals are my friends.” [Read more...]
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Rugs Become Tactile Grasslands
Kids are great explorers of the world around them, always looking closely at things we adults forget to appreciate. Given the right context, however, we can remember the wonder of childhood and explore things anew. Imagine a world where the spirit of nature comes indoors: grasslands begging to be explored by touch with your feet and hands. That is the experiential work that Argentinian artist Alexandra Kehayoglou is creating using hand woven wool rugs as her medium. Her work, which could be called rug or tapestry art, sees patchy natural-looking fields come indoors. [Read more...]
Amy Guidry Explores the Psychology of Life and Death
The recent collection of paintings from Louisiana based artist Amy Guidry brings the surreal so certainly into existence it seems to easily step off the canvas into reality. Her work is filled with animal and human figures, often taking center stage in what appears as a bleak and beautiful southwest american landscape. This highly ambitious imagery – from detailed rock formations, to skeletons and variously dissected creatures – would be arresting on its own, but it also explores concepts more profound: the rich layers of connection in the cycle of life. [Read more...]
Hidden Patterns: How a Bee Sees the World of Flowers
Humans are interesting creatures. We look at the world with some of the most advanced eyes and minds, but often fail to realize that others see the world differently than we do. While this idea is often put forward when talking about the way other people experience the world, in this case I’m literally talking about vision, and insects in particular.
In the vast electromagnetic spectrum of wavelengths (extending from below the long wavelengths used for radio, to the short wavelengths of gamma radiation) we humans see only a miniscule fraction that we call visible light. This small sliver, spanning the distance between violet and red is the way we perceive the world around us with our eyes. However bees and other insects have a different view of the world. Their whole range of light is shifted further towards the violet end of the spectrum and further from the red. This means that, while they can’t perceive red, they see colors we simply cannot see – what we call ultra-violet. This also means is that bees see a world literally hidden before our eyes. [Read more...]
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Remarkable Sculptures on Humans and Nature
Viewed from the back, Olga Ziemska’s Stillness in Motion is only a bush of twigs, or at the most a tied bundle; but walk around to the front and you come face-to-face with a womanly figure cut with precision into the round wood sticks. Such is the case with much of this artists surprising work, at once looking familiar and then changing into something wholly unexpected. [Read more...]
Carved Spirits Hidden in the Trees
Many people like to leave their spirit carved in a tree, but most of the time it takes the form of a carved heart and a few letters symbolizing the lovers who put it there. Sculptor Keith Jennings takes tree carving in another direction, carving into the bark of living trees and revealing mystical spaces from inside their trunks. It’s a view that would fascinate and potentially frighten those lucky enough to walk by and witness it. [Read more...]
