'Faculty Department' is a beautiful personal photography project and visual journey by the talented Justin Chung, focussing on the lives, spaces and stories of talented and noteworthy individuals worldwide. Chung’s interest in photographing creative people came alive when he moved to New York City to pursue a career in commercial fashion photography and portraiture in 2011. Chung found that while he was inspired by the work these creatives were producing, what he felt most connected to was their process: how the smallest intricacies in their daily lives contributed to making them the most effective, most happy, and most real. It is these intimate details Chung hopes to capture in the pages of 'Faculty Department'. [ Continue reading ]
Eleven-time world champion surfer Kelly Slater has just released the name and first imagery of his new, and highly promising looking, ready-to-wear brand named Outerknown. The name Outerknown references the furthest reaches of our knowledge today. It challenges the people behind the brand to build better, more sustainable products. It asks to lift the lid on the supply chain bringing the consumer along on our journey to transparency. Slater has put together a world-class team that includes co-founder John Moore as Creative Director overseeing product and marketing. Moore has collaborated with Slater in the past, and was recently named as one of GQ’s best new menswear designers of the year for 2014. [ Continue reading ]
Chamber is an exciting new boutique of limited edition design, objects and art, which opens today in the Chelsea neighborhood of New York City. The space’s unique concept and retail experience is the vision of Argentinian-born Founder Juan Garcia Mosqueda. Critically acclaimed architectural practice MOS has designed the interior of the space. Taking the Renaissance-era Cabinet of Curiosities as its inspiration, Chamber will be a twenty-first century reliquary for unusual objects and a platform for design experimentation. Every two years, Garcia Mosqueda will choose a different designer or creative to curate the shop’s entire program, bringing their unique viewpoint to Chamber through specially commissioned works, and rare and vintage items. For the inaugural curatorial period, he has selected designers Studio Job, who are working closely with a dynamic group of established and emerging designers and artists to create Chamber Collection #1. [ Continue reading ]
Although there had been earlier clues towards it, last Friday one of our favorite artists of the moment, Ashkan Honarvar, announced that the collage works which have been released under the pseudonym Who Killed Mickey for the last three years were also the product of his fascinating mind and that the project now has ended. The idea for Who Killed Mickey, which progressively grew over the period of the last years, came up in order for Honarvar to have an output where he could use all his leftover scraps from his regular work, but also to create collages just for the fun of it. These prerequisites translated into some of Honarvar's most bold work, using familiar images from the fashion industry and pop culture combined with pornography and anatomical images, without a clear overall concept to be observed, but with his incredible signature aesthetic written all over it. [ Continue reading ]
At the initiative of the OstLicht Gallery and Peter Coeln in Vienna, 'Araki Teller, Teller Araki' which took place from the 4th of April until the 25th of May of this year, brought together two of the most important photographers of our times, showing new works conceived for this joint exhibition and entering into an artistic dialogue. The exhibition presented the encounter between two attitudes of extraordinary photographers, who are united in their radical artistic attitude and their almost insatiable hunger for images as reflections of their personal experience of the world. The elementary interest at the core of their work is the spiritual and physical ambivalence of human existence. To coincide with the exhibition Antenna Books in a collaboration with Araki's own eyesencia released Nobuyoshi Araki's and Juergen Teller's first jointly conceived and designed book. The publication assembles more than 300 photographs, including those works shown as part of the exhibition which were previously unpublished. In addition, Araki and Teller have each dedicated a text to the other. [ Continue reading ]
Last Thursday, on the 18th of September, the exhibition named 'Sonic' opened in the Paris-based Fondation Pierre Bergé-Yves Saint Laurent. It takes a look at 15 years of Hedi Slimane's photographic musical archives, ranging from London to New York, with particular focus on the beautiful Californian cycle begun in 2007, from which came 'California Song', the exhibition at the MOCA / Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles in November 2011. In 'Sonic' studio portraits of highly influential and heroic rock figures like Lou Reed, Keith Richards, Pete Doherty, Amy Winehouse and Brian Wilson, stand alongside images of alternative scenes from London or California. The exhibition is completed with a video installation, juxtaposing the musical cycles of London (2003-2007) and California (2007-2014) in a documentary style, painting an alternative portrait of two generations of performers and their fans. This combination of two worlds; that of the icons of rock and roll and on the other side the rock and roll to be found in everyday life, exemplifies Slimane's unique creative vision and masterful observations from which all his work, whether as Artistic Director in fashion or as a photographer, stems. Make sure to visit whenever in Paris! [ Continue reading ]
We recently stumbled upon the thrilling photographic work of New London, USA, based photographic artist Pola Esther, who was born and raised in Lodz, Poland. As an artist Esther uses photography as her main platform for expression, with her fascinating series named 'Mutual Attraction' consisting of diptych collages, clearly showing her love of photographing nature, mostly human. The work of Esther reflects upon her intimacy, femininity and sexuality. Images with the figure can be provocative, encouraging us to peep through the keyhole, where behind lays a romantic and sometimes grim world full of the unknown. She produces a highly diverse color palette moving as broad as grainy, blurry black and white to silky pastelle-like colors in orchestrated romantic settings, sometimes juxtaposing different styles, creating wonderful little spectacles which continue to fascinate us. [ Continue reading ]
