Exquisitely arranged and rotting apart, this food is way past its expiration date. Austrian artist Klaus Pichler responds to a United Nations study that says one third of all food products in the world go to waste. Behold — watermelon, eggs, and strawberry cream, engulfed in spores, crawling with maggots, and dripping with putrid liquid. And looking gorgeous! Spotted by Nerdcore, each elaborate, classically arranged still-life in Pichler’s extensive photo essay One Third comes with a full list of sobering figures on each item’s origin, cultivation method, transporting distance, means of transportation, and carbon footprint. The images are strangely appealing, but the food is clearly in severe states of degeneration and terrifying inedible. Yet, it’s the chronic wastefulness of modern food culture that leaves a bad taste in our mouth.
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Have you ever been privy to a real-life portal? Yeah, we haven’t either, but Scott Hazard’s photographs almost had us convinced that they definitely exist. Then, we discovered his technique. The Raleigh-based artist strategically tears and layers his photographs, creating eerie illusions of nonexistent clouds, smoke, and portals along the way. Cool idea, eh? Hazard does the same with his “Text Constructs,” as words on paper are torn and rearranged and form new, fascinating pieces of art. Check out a selection of Hazard’s work after the jump, and head to his website for more.
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A lot goes into making the perfect photograph: a good eye, impeccable composition, and lighting skills, for starters. Yet, sometimes, you need a little bit of magic for the right image to unfold before your lens, a stroke of luck that aligns the various elements and then, your quick instinct to capture the moment. We’ve rounded up a few great examples from both classic and contemporary photography just in time for St. Patrick’s Day. These are all fantastic photographers to begin with, so take a look and decide: Are these shots lucky or are they just good?
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Photographer Evgenia Arbugaeva grew up in Tiksi, a speck of an urban settlement in Siberia. You’d think that a being surrounded by harsh gusts and frozen hills and spending days upon days without sun would make a kid melancholy, but no. Evgenia’s imagination enchanted the barren landscape and her isolation. She was happy here, until the Soviet Union broke up and her family had to relocate. Last year, a grown-up Evgenia returned to her home town under the Northern Lights and shot photographs evoking her childhood, using this cheerful girl as her stand-in. Spotted by English Russia, these photos show us a different side of Siberia, as seen through the eyes of a child who never grew up.
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Brooklyn-based artist Mike Mission created an extensive series of photos documenting the odd objects accidentally embedded into the sidewalks and roads of New York City. ”Asphalt Archeology” is just that — a clean, sterile study of bit after metal bit — locks, screws, chain links, and other randomness, peeking out from the layers of worn asphalt. These urban artifacts — gleaming, rusted, crushed, and shattered — are also, in most cases, perfectly ordinary —— but we like to think about layers upon layers of decades upon decades of history found here. There’s also a strange, half-thwarted inertia to them. A drill bit with its lips submerged looks like it could almost move; a chain link looks like it’s sinking, as if just dropped into quicksand. Wait. Are we getting carried away? Well, then, never mind. Here’s some random stuff stuck in asphalt. Enjoy.
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Swedish-born photographer Christer Strömholm moved to Pigalle, Paris in 1959. He was absorbed into the Red Light district. He lived with and developed intimate friendships and relationships with the prostitutes. He shot them coquettishly working the streets, and unguarded, cavorting in their homes. He shot them putting on their drag as playful, still-boyish figures transformed into their true state — the magnificent tigresses of the Place Blanche. Spotted by Dangerous Minds, here are some of these captivating, unpretentious photographs. Many more can be found in Strömholm’s book, Amies De Place Blanche.
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Yann Rabanier’s portraits of celebrities aren’t your typically glossy affair. The lighting isn’t perfectly flattering, hair is out of place; clearly Rabanier isn’t trying to imitate the hundreds of slick snapshots we normally see of celebs, but that’s what makes them great. It’s a real-life moment, without all the fuss that portrays the screen stars and other famous figures in a natural way. That said, it takes a few seconds to realize who each person is — an experience akin to bumping into your favorite actor on the street and having that “Aha!” moment seconds later. Antonio Banderas (plus his The Skin I Live In co-star Elena Anaya) and Ryan Gosling are amongst the few you’ll know, but the French photographer has also focused on un-Hollywood talent like Michel Piccoli (who has worked with all the French New Wave greats), and Dennis Hopper’s son, Henry. Visit our gallery below.
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Every weekend, Chris Arnade leaves Brooklyn Heights and heads to Hunts Point in the Bronx, searching for subjects of his ongoing Faces of Addiction photo essay. ”I post people’s stories as they tell them to me,” he writes. “I am not a journalist. I don’t try to verify, just listen.” They talk. These New Yorkers are living in shelters, abandoned buildings, crack houses, and vacant lots are suffering through addiction and recovery, together. Many of them are victims of abusive households, former runaways who grew up on the street, forced into the most dangerous sort of sex work, assaulted, raped and stabbed. They are blunt about their lives; they are grateful for what they do have. The essay is both heartbreaking and hopeful. There’s a tentative intimacy to them, a reserved dignity. Flip through some of these portraits and see the full set to read their stories.
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Berlin-based, self-taught photographer Matthias Heiderich creates ethereal landscapes, inspired by hazy and hidden rural areas. The sepia drenched dreamscapes are abstracted by inky shadows with only crisp hints of power lines and tree branches sometimes visible. In those moments, the photos could easily be contemporary drawings full of lights, darks, and textures. The works also feel like lost, turn of the century snapshots of forgotten places. Visit Heiderich’s eerie, countryside muse in our gallery below.
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Tomorrow would have been the 45th birthday of legendary grunge hero Kurt Cobain, who committed suicide at age 27 to the despair of the world at large. Though we know there were many times in his life when he was a happy, goofy guy, he very publicly struggled with depression, addiction, and illness, and when you think of Cobain, you tend to think of a doleful guy barely looking out from behind his matted blond locks. So, to celebrate the good times in Cobain’s life, we’ve collected a series of photographs with family, friends, and bandmates, where the guy just looks really happy. Because that’s how we’d like to remember him. Click through to see Kurt Cobain smile a whole lot, and if we’ve missed your favorite photo, direct us to it in the comments!
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