The image of Shakespeare's Ophelia submerging herself in a river has inspired artists for centuries, from the 19th-century Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood to the contemporary photo studio Staudinger Franke. Their "Barrier" series features female models resting below the water's surface in a way that evokes Hamlet's tragic love interest. While Staudinger Franke typically work in advertising, this personal project shows the sensual, subtle side of their practice.
The image of Shakespeare’s Ophelia submerging herself in a river has inspired artists for centuries, from the 19th-century Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood to the contemporary photo studio Staudinger Franke. Their “Barrier” series features female models resting below the water’s surface in a way that evokes Hamlet’s tragic love interest. While Staudinger Franke typically work in advertising, this personal project shows the sensual, subtle side of their practice.
Antony Crossfield, an artist based in London, manipulates his photographs to create new ways of looking at our natural forms. Series like “Second Skin” take the outer shell of the human body and pushes it outside of the boundaries of superficiality. It’s in these exercises that Crossfield aims to “to present the body not as a protective envelope that defines and unifies our limits, but as an organ of physical and psychical interchange between bodies.”
Diane Meyer emulates pixels and digital imaging with cross-stitched embroidery, sewn into her photos. Whether it’s a series of travel captures or her own, personal family snaps, Meyer explores both intersecting eras of photography and the concept of memory itself. The result is something that both distorts and celebrates the longevity of these experiences.
The haunting smoke photographs of French photographer Gilles Soudry transport us into his black and fluffy universe, where the streams of smoke take on strangely human and animal-like formations. First featured here on our blog last year, Soudry has since completed the third installment of his "Volutes" series, an ongoing study of smoke's mystifying effects as it is captured in a single moment in time.
Tbilisi, Georgia based artist Tezi Gabunia's latest project not only invites you to go inside of an art gallery, but become the art, too. "Put Your Head into Gallery" features identical miniature sets of some of the world's most famous galleries such as the Louvre, the Tate Modern, Saatchi Gallery, and Gagosian, which he then places a model's head inside of and photographs. The result is a surreal series of images of giant human heads peering into galleries, recalling Eric White's miniature exhibits.
