Rodney Smith

Rodney Smith is a photographer who appreciates the subtleties in film and looking at things from a classic photographers point of view. He calls himself a traditionalist and someone who places people inside of landscapes. He never uses special effects.

There is something about his work difficult to discuss using words. However, the word "timeless" keeps coming up and again for me. There is detail and simplicity in his process. I really enjoy looking at his work for the photography aspect on its own. His composition and perspective on life is amazing. It's clever. It's different.

http://www.rodneysmith.com/portfolio

Jacinda Russell

i came a cross a new artist over the last couple of weeks that has sparked a interest in that she has done some work with obsession and the obsessions that people have. She is currently an assistant professor at Muncie Indiana. She got her BFA in Boise, at Boise State University and her MFA at University of Arizona in Photography. She likes to transform objects into self portraits, the objects take on a representation of the people and the places.

http://jacindarussellart.blogspot.com/2011/03/tales-of-obsession-from-cigarette-pack.html

http://jacindarussell.com/home.html

Tryee Guyton

http://www.heidelberg.org

http://wdet.org/shows/craig-fahle-show/episode/heidelberg-project-founder-honored-through-jazz/

http://www.tyreeguyton.com

He feel he is a artist that is striving to be a part of the solution yet some think he is a creator of a eye sore and have resorted to burning down his work. A man that draws attention to some of the blite in Detroit area and uses found items to make a point with his crations has lately been in the new again as his creations now for the second time in a month have been burned to the ground. A project that has been there for well over 27 years and has inspired many other artist, and has been a backdrop for countless photos is now under fire as arson burn it to the ground.

He studied art at Marygrove College and at Wayne state University he told a teaching position there in 2007 he has had his work displayed in Australia and and at other  international  areas he also has been represented by the Detroit Art Institute. His grandfather was a recognize internationally as a artist. 

Enrico Natali

http://www.enriconatali.com/index.html


I recently went to a book signing for Enrico Natali's 1968. Natali documented the shift from industrial Era of Detroit before the rise of racial tension. His style feels very similar to Gordon Parks and naturally I was drown to this.
When he spoke he talked about reality only existing to the individual through perception. Enrico also said that he wasn't searching for anything and he didn't plan this, it just happened. This work is exactly the kind of sentiments that I'm looking for in my future work ironically starting in Detroit.
In Natlis new work he walking around with a DSLR snapping at random and later cropping in. He believes that the universe will work in disfavor and that exciting and intriguing to me because I believe the same.

http://www.kwangholee.com

"The Threads that Bind us includes a series of original works in which "woven material" is clearly of fundamental importance, turning out to be crucial for instilling identity and character on certain objects and for evoking a vision of how the practice of weaving fibres opens up to meaningful interpretations. A thread, which is a flexible, non-extendable structure, is what allows operations like sewing, embroidery and weaving to be carried out, age-old creative practices which, even though they have very definite and unmistakable roots in craft tradition, turn out to still be valid realms of exploration for assessing new or innovative solutions. As well as reviving an old-fashioned and universally practised craft, the use of threads and yarns for the modern-day manufacturing of objects is also a very up-to-date and original means of expression, giving new meaning to key terms like "knot" and "stitch" and metaphorically evoking the concepts of "weave" and "web". The designers have been selected by the curators and invited to take part in the Exhibition through the design and implementation of an unpublished work. "

this is part of his Prophets & Penitents series

He was born in 1981 in Seoul Korea.  He majored in Metal Art & Design at Hongik University, and graduated in February 2007. He currently lives and works in Seoul. He started working this way because of his grandfather who liked to collect things and turn them into tool or peace of functioning things and he kept them around the house. Kwangho remembers walking over all his grandfathers inventions in the home he grew up in and the stuff he collected.

Xavier Chassaing

This is an artist who's video I came across and very much was drawn to for a number of reasons.

1) The camera movement through a space is done in a way that was smooth and seductive.
2) The time-lapse element and light treatment + focus + motion (screen projection) stands out for being unique.
3) The music and slow build-up is stunning once you see the whole thing through.

This short film is really the essence of that "something extra" I've been looking for. It's this technique that gives rise to ideas to come for what I'm continually working on. The fact that this is all possible without thousands of dollars and special effects is pretty amazing to me. A way to combine the real with the unreal, a way of creating possibilities.

More shorts and some commercial work of his can be seen at http://www.lestelecreateurs.com/directors/xavier-chassaing/

https://vimeo.com/3114617

As the website MOTIONOGRAPHER writes about Xavier:

What looks like film is in fact 35,000 photographs with a mix of 3d mapped projections. Being a young director, Xavier doesn’t have the facilities and financial backing that a commercial piece will grant. Instead he had to work under what he calls “the classic dogma which is ‘What can you do with what you have…’” I think this sums up Xavier’s process pretty well. Here is what he had to say to me about his technical process for Scintillation:

What I have was an apartment, a small DSLR camera, a small computer and a small videoprojector. I also made a contraption who looks like a motion control but with the particularity of moving extremely slow who allowed me to take sequences of pictures with long exposure. (1frame per second, with 1 second of exposure). Even the best camera can not compete with this kind of sensitivity if they shoot at normal speed. So, I did everything myself from the 3d animation that I project on object, building the machine, the editing etc..

Michael Northrup

Michael Northrup is an American photographer who has consciously and with extreme precision and dedication steadily documented his family, friends, and personal sphere through photographs beginning in the 1970's.

These photos are incredibly recognizable for me.  They are my family, they are your family.  They are everyone you've ever met or no one you've ever met simultaneously.   My interest in family, the anatomy of family and personal space, the notion of home and the cherished (sacred) are all displayed here through seemingly simple photos which you might find looking through your grandmother's attic on a September afternoon; breeze and dust illuminated in the light between the slats on the tiny window.  This is nostalgia, but it is also a longing for a nostalgia that doesn't exist.

This family doesn't belong to me.  These friends don't belong to me.  These memories don't belong to me.  But somehow they do.  I feel like they're mine and that's the most interesting part of his work to me.  The impossible reconciliation between images that have nothing to do with me and the extremely personal effect they create in the viewer.

I'm really interested in nostalgia, manufactured memory, displaced memory, personal and private space vs. the public sphere, and also the inherent feeling of being a spy, a voyeur into someone else's life story.  The emotion that this creates is an odd and eerie combination that I try to create in my writing as well as photography that I've been working on where I focus on my immediate, most coveted and sacred spaces and people, but where I also try to incorporate an element of "unreality" or hyper reality which aims to suggest the concept of how we define "home" "family", other words and language that evoke "safe" while at the same time evoke strangeness or the unrecognizable.