Claudine Doury

http://www.claudinedoury.com/en/portfolio_artek.htm
Claudine Doury is living in Paris, and she has received a few awards for her work and has published a few books. Though these photos aren't the most current (the dates range from 1999-2011), I will continue to go back to them for inspiration now that I've found them.
I came across her while reading an interview on a photography blog called Mull it Over, where Claudine's "cinematic-like" work was mentioned. I can see how that description fits; she photographs in a way that make her photos look like small moments in a scene. I appreciate her approach, where some images feel pre-planned and set up while others do not. I think it's that combination that makes each of her projects strong.






 


 

Housing Developments of the American West By: William Rugen

     Originally raised in Northern Michigan, William Rugen is a Seattle-based photographer.  After working as a biologist for 20 years, he quit his job to pursue photography. Inspired by Manifest Destiny and his love for the west Western Dioramas, he explores the conflict between man and nature specifically, the abundance of open space versus the inhabited. 

 Rows of houses in the desert, North Las Vegas, Nevada

End of a street with opening to the desert in Henderson, Nevada 

Housing development on the edge of the desert, Maricopa, Nevada

Sara Rahbar

Sarah Rahbar is a Iranian artist who works both in Tehran and New York.  Rahbar has said that she doesn't identify as a Muslim, but her Iranian background and the events that occure in her homeland influence her as an artist.

She frequently addresses subjects that deal with political issues and current events: themes of identity, nationalism and borders feature prominently in her work. 

One of the materials Rahbar uses most frequently in her work is flags. She dislikes the way flags divide and separate people, creating artificial borders and isolation and making people feel they are different from others in distant countries. In herOppression Series, Rahbar is “exploring ideas of national belonging, as well as the conflicting role of flags as symbols of ideological and nationalistic violence.” Countries, cultures, and diversity are major forces in the world today. According to the artist, “we have made our personal identities so important and supreme above all. We believe that it is our countries, our nationalism, our religions, our cultures, our beliefs and so on, that make us who and what we are.” The result that Rahbar sees is the dividing, separating, and labeling of individuals.

-Women Arab-American Artist

 

Eerie and Romantic Photos of the Sea Shot in the Dead of Night

http://www.featureshoot.com/2015/02/eerie-and-romantic-photos-of-the-sea-shot-in-the-dead-of-night/ 

For Moonlighting, London-based photographer Paul Thompson ventures out to the coast in the dead of night, escaping all the light and noise of the city for a few hours of darkness set aglow by the rhythms of the sea.

Thompson is drawn to the seaside in part because it brings back memories of a childhood spent on the coast. He seeks out terrain that is both familiar and mysterious, spaces that metamorphose at night from the commonplace into the preternatural. Though he knows the landscape and can often see boats on the horizon, Thompson’s nights at sea bring with them an eerie sense of isolation. “Your eyes and ears play tricks on you,” he says. Since he works on film, it’s only hours later in development that the true nature of the elusive night reveals itself.

A linke to the artist's website:

http://www.paulthompsonstudio.com/ 

I immediately choose these photos to upload them here when I saw them in Feature Shoot.And then I thought why I was interested on these photos? Maybe because I can see the road. Where does the road goes? To the horizon. What is over there? Nothing. So, what is after the nothing, after the horizon? In these photos artist directing us to the specific point in the photos. Some light some goal in a very far away. But what we see at the background is almost the same thing whit what we can see at front. It is telling us that the path in the goal itself. There is nothing in the end.

 

 

 

Jerry Uelsmann

Jerry Uelsmann is a surrealist photographer thats works with film and manipulation in the darkroom. His images are very unique in a way to where they seem dreamlike and odd. I like that aspect to his work and I feel like with the responses I could get from my inkblots that they could be bizarre and will appear to be dreamlike how his photos are. Looking at his work inspires me and gives me a slight idea on how I could handle a bizarre response and execute it effectively.

Jamie Baldridge

Jamie Baldridge was born in 1975 in a very small town in the deep south. Jamie got a BFA in Photography, eventually obtaining an MFA in Photography from the same institution. He is currently a professor of photography at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.

I enjoy the surreal nature of the photos, and the technical mastery of collaging the elements together. 

Jamie's website can be found here: http://jamiebaldridge.com/index.html

Laura Letinsky

Laura Letinsky is a Canadian photographer who currently is a professor at the University of Chicago.  Her series "Hardly More Than Ever," is an interesting twist on classic still life paintings, and speaks about consumerism and our materialistic nature.  Rather than photographing a luxurious meal, she photographs the remains of a meal, leaving the viewer to make up their own narratives.  Along with that, the dishes are left in somewhat awkward positions, making the viewer a bit anxious.  She started this series in East Berlin, "where the unfamiliar context made me intensely aware of my own cultural and material relationship to food."  After that, she continued to work on it through several years.

http://www.wipnyc.org/blog/laura-letinsky

Untitled, #60, Hardly More Than Ever series, 2002

Untitled, #92, Hardly More Than Ever series, 2004

Untitled, #23, Hardly More Than Ever series, 1999

Untitled, #15, Hardly More Than Ever series, 1999