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.