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.
After singing for a rock band, working as a tattooist, and modeling for Playboy, Russian artist Anka Zhuravleva settled behind the lens. Her photography vacillates between a surrealistic and editorial aesthetic, although, it seems, that she cooks up pieces that resonates with both. With soft, painterly yet obscure visuals, the photographer puts forth a collection of imagery that drives the viewer inside a feminine dream world in which girls and women in anachronistic costumes fly and float among sublime, hazy landscapes.
Life truly imitates art in this set of photos of models recreating some of Austrian symbolist Gustav Klimt's most famous paintings. The images were taken earlier this year for the Life Ball in Vienna, Europe's biggest charity fundraiser, which went "gold" in support of people with HIV or AIDS. "To awaken a spirit of optimism, liveliness and activity in every single person - that is the goal," it says at the event's website. Models were costumed and painted as an embodiment of Klimt, whose work featured primarily the female body marked by a frank eroticism, and found success in his later years for his mosaic-like "Golden Phase" paintings.
Lin Tianmiao is considered one of today's most notorious contemporary artists in China, especially among women who are under-represented there in her field. Her signature medium is everyday materials, particularly woven textile such as silk, which she uses to convey modern women's frustrations and identity. This has earned her the "feminist artist" label, one that she rejects. Male or female, her cryptic and ethereal works have captured the imagination for decades. Her "Focus" portrait photo series is currently on view in the "Conceal/Reveal: Making Meaning in Chinese Art" group showing at Seattle Asian Art Museum (SAM).
The word "wallflower" was first used in the early 1800s to refer to a woman without a partner at a dance, presumably sitting against the wall. Today, it represents any person who appears or feels shy and awkward. Southern California based artist Janine Brown captures the feeling of being a wallflower in her dream-like series of pinhole camera portraits, titled "The Wallflower Project."
