Kelli Connell

Kelli received her BFA in photography and Visual Art Studies from the University of North Texas and her MFA in photography. Her body of work titled double life has influenced the way that I think about conveying a mental duality in photograph. I think working similarly to this will aid me in illustrating the struggle of a subservient self.

ANDREA MARY MARSHALL

Andrea Mary Marshall is a self-portrait artist living and working in New York City. Originally, she studied fashion design at Parsons School of Fashion. Soon after graduating, she shifted to fine art, staging self-portraits in photography, video, performance, and painting. Her fine art training is mostly self-taught, although she has certainly taken cues from artists like Cindy Sherman.

Her work deals with female identity and sexuality especially as it relates to advertising and the fashion world. She often references significant portraits of women in art history. One of her characters, Gia Condo, is loosely based on the mystery surrounding the Mona Lisa.

Her work also contains a lot of religious themes and iconography.

I like how she exaggerates the melodramatic nature of fashion advertising and depictions of women to humorous, although still elegant, proportions. She brings to light some very interesting parallels between fashion and religion and their depictions of women. One of these parallels is the tragic seriousness that infects them both. Her self-portraits reflect the stoic, restrained facial expressions and poses of religious and fashion imagery. I have always found this seriousness strange since it is often present with characters who are in dramatic, unusual situations. The other parallel is the simultaneous worship and degradation of women. (See Self Portrait as Trash Bag Mona Lisa) This comments on the contradictory madonna/whore dichotomy that is imposed on women. Whether she is aware of these congruencies or not, I think they are what make her work most compelling. 

Forlane 6 Studio (Hortense Le Calvez & Mathieu Goussin)

I recently stumbled upon Forlane 6 Studio, which is comprized with Hortense Le Calvez & Mathieu Goussin. Their work speaks of "an alien world taking place"deep in our seas. The two search for our personal and "forgotten artificial materials and objects" which now exist only beneath the surface. The projects of Forlane 6 Studio "intend to question and imagine how organic shapes and man-made ones could merge and cohabit when transformed and positioned in the context of a foreign space inaccessible to human life."

There is a duality in their work. They hand-make their own formations but they are only shown underwater. Deep into the ocean, like these found in the series below

 Posidonia

Blow Dry

Bluminescence

They record video as well, showing bottles filled with air of some sort blasting off underwater while being teathered to the tubes themselves and therefore suspended as an experiment of sorts, for example. My favorite video series of theirs is called Dia. This short video (or documentation) is underwater footage of two harnesses consisting of hosing that is attached to a power source which allows each hold harness to hold a disc that rises from underground, tossing toss sand that was on top of it into the ocean. Soon the screen is filled with smoke. Time often repeats and goes backwards, giving the impression that these machines are imploding on themselves.

I must say, It's great to see photographers playing with ideas of time, space, and motion (fast / slow / forward / reverse) while focusing on a series of objects—Which really might as well be classified as living, breathing sculptures. The water has it's own life-force, which the two agree are a large part of the bigger picture. 

Read more about Forlane 6 Studio (UK)

Laura Makabresku

Laura Makabresku is a Polish photographer living and working in Krakow.  She is what is often times referred to as an "Internet photographer", meaning her work is mainly published on tumblr, Flickr, Facebook, and via her own blog.  She is a student and began pursuing photography as a hobby when she received her first camera in high school.  This eventually spiraled into her undertaking the art form as her sole means of expression and also as a conduit to possibly a career as she has already had some of her work displayed in Italian Vogue, mainly fashion and editorial photography.

She work is very mystic and has an ethereal quality to it.  She only photographs herself, close friends, and her belongings which signify her personal attachment and relationship to her art.  Her pieces evoke a fairy tale/magical realism that translates visually as somewhat of a love letter yet simultaneously a love letter that is always on the verge of being destroyed.  She juxtaposes death and love, beauty and the melancholy of the world. Through extremely stylized gorgeous shots she creates a dreamy aura that resembles hypnosis or familiarity causing us to feel as though we have been to this place before.  We have seen these woods and these objects before.

In my writing I strive for the binary of death/beauty, or the imbalance of themes such as atrocity, sexuality, the grotesque, beloved, family, disconnect, and I think she really executes this quite well.  It's tricky to make that style work both aesthetically and also with language and her work does a really excellent job of illustrating complex emotional themes and tone without coming off as adolescent goth.

I also write in the style of magical realism or hyper realism which her photography suggests and manages to elicit perfectly.  Her work is also kind of the hyper-stylized exaggerated beauty and sadness that Lars Von Trier films exhibit; who is also a major influence on not only my writing but also my visual art.

Corrie Witt-Enya Moran

Corrie Witt got her BA in photography from Columbia College and her MFA in photography from the University of Illinois at Chicago.  She now teaches photography part-time at DePaul University. All of Corrie's work is of small doll house furniture that she does close up views of. I really enjoy all of her work because it tells a story. Each one of her images has a mysterious feeling to it. I feel like there is a missing piece in all her work. I see stories that are untold and for me they begin to tell a sad lonely story. This is exactly how I want my audience to feel, like my images tell stories but untold ones. Because I do not want them to be totally obvious.