JR started as a graffiti artist at 15, his style changed after he found a camera on the underground two years later. JR began creating 'expo de rue', or sidewalk exhibitions. he pasted the work he created on the streets and gave copies to his friends.
after the 2005 riots in Les Boquets JR saw the images he had pasted of his friends in the area in news reports. when photographing 'portraits of a generation' JR used a 28mm lens. in this project he wanted to change the stereotypical views on people being thugs. in his next project 'face 2 face' he covered issues addressing the Israeli and Palestine conflict. JR captures photos of both Israeli and Palestine people and pasted then next to each other, when asking people to identify which was which, no one could tell them apart. his intention here was to show that there is no difference between the two. this sparked shock among them. in his next work JR wanted to celebrate women. he named this project 'women are heroes' he tricked the media into finding out what was happening in Rio de Janerio by not sharing any information and forcing the media to interview the women in the portraits to get the true story. JR chose to photograph women in places of conflict or slums because they are always the first to suffer. JR never has permission to paste up his work. he refuses all sponsorship or branding because that way he is only responsible for himself. |
Wiley's intentions are to give African Americans a chance to show themselves in a way not documented in art history before. he choses his models at random from the street and asks them to choose an old painting to recreate the pose of. this allows them to reclaim their identity and represent themselves in a way that may contrast typical paintings. Kehinde Wiley includes patters from west African culture.
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Mauren Brodbeck photographs building that are familiar or boring and replaced them with a solid colour to show the significance of their absence, these buildings are paid so little attention that when trying to recall them, our minds blank, unable to remember what they looked like. Brodbeck changes this into a visual moment representing space and time.
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Savinova explores the character and spirit of a place. Each piece of work is made up of multiple photographs of buildings and/or landscape forms that are specific to an area. These collages balance between documentary and fiction, factual and imaginary spaces, that show the spirit and personality of a place.
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Kensuke Koile is a contemporary visual artist who tries to challenge the norms of image making by bringing new meaning to archive found photography. Born in Japan, Koile now lives in Italy.
The artist buys old photographs at fleamarkets and distorts them in his studio to bring the public often irregular work that is exhibited around the world. his aim is to create meaning from an already existing object. |
Duane Michals is a self taught American photographer born in 1932. Michals' work makes contemporary use of photo-sequences, he often uses text as well to inspect emotion and philosophy. in an era heavily influenced by photojournalism, michals manipulates the narrative, his work often follows a frame by frame format.
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Abigail Reynolds is a British artist who creates work using art collage and doesn't take her images at face value. Abigail Reynolds searches flea markets and old bookstores to find source materials, repurposing them for her work, often heavily featuring rural England. she creates her work using collage and creates compositions through repurposing vintage photographs, magazines, encyclopaedias and atlases.
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