┐ Ananda Serné └

© Ananda Serné, Untitled

© Ananda Serné, Untitled

Sometimes I see images in my head and then I draw them, but only with the intention to make a photo later. I almost never take a photo spontaneously.

Ananda’s site here

┐ Isabella Rozendaal └

© Isabella Rozendaal, Sedated and shaved, ready for castration, from the project On Loving Animals

© Isabella Rozendaal, from the Hunting project

Irony is part of Isabella’s projects portraying animals, either as objects of love or as desirable preys. Hunters will argue no one loves animals as they do. I find this such an absurd statement I don’t even argue with them. Her images manage to highlight several incongruities in these supposed loving relationships with animals. The ownership seems to liberate a perverse sense of power; the same happens with propriety. Here is no different.

For more of Isabella’s words and pictures here

┐ Wyne Veen └

© Wyne Veen, Modern Art

© Wyne Veen, Plant Hair

“My central theme is uselessness. I feel that life is ridiculous. The products and arrangements I show are a reflection of investments of time and effort by men. They show the development of our society just like the old 17th century famous Dutch still lives did. But I don’t see this development as something to be proud of, I think it is way over the top. So I criticise it. I often wonder what on earth people are occupied with while there are so many better things to do. I don’t want to define these better things, because it’s up to people themselves. But I am quite sure it won’t be creating another plastic peach.”

source: Triangulation blog

Wyne’s site, full of beautiful and creative imagery (on the topic, of course)

┐ Luuk Wilmering └

© Luuk Wilmering, Call it by it’s name nr. 1, from the series Birds need shelter, 2011

© Luuk Wilmering, Birdhunters, from the series Birds need shelter, 2011

“Luuk Wilmering‘s latest series, Bird Needs Shelter, was largely created during his work period in the Holsboer studio in the Cité des Arts, Paris, in 2010/2011.
Bird Needs Shelter is concerned with the duplicitous character of man‘s dealings with nature. In this four-part series, birds and our relationship with them form the central subject. The series shows how man, through ‗abuse of power‘, causes the extinction of certain species, how birds are hunted and how they should be properly served and eaten. However, the series also shows the possibilities of escape: the ‗egghouses‘ and the birds that disappear into nature and are cut out and doubled by the artist.
The structure of the work is defined by four imaginary personages, each of whom stands for a certain mentality: the gastronome, the scientist, the hunter and the artist. Around these characters, Wilmering has spent two years making four installations, which connect and refer to each other.
For this series, which is not yet completed, Wilmering has realized more than a hundred drawings, coloured-in photos, designs and collages, and has made hundreds of photos, including many taken in the Musée d‘Histoire Naturelle. A selection from this recent work is presented in the exhibition Une histoire naturelle.”

source: Institut Neerlandais

Luuk’s website here with a couple of very interesting projects

┐ Daria Tuminas └

© Daria Tuminas, Untitled, from the series Ivan and the Moon

© Daria Tuminas, Untitled, from the series Ivan and the Moon

© Daria Tuminas, Untitled, from the series Ivan and the Moon

“Ivan is the elder, he is 16. Andrey, nicknamed Moon, is the younger, 14 by now. The two brothers live in a distant village in the northern part of Russia. They are not like regular teenagers, and live in a fairy tale world, yet deeply connected to nature: they go hunting and fishing, can use a joiner’s chisel, play with ghosts at abandoned places, do not want to move to a city, and love nature. Mature and childish. Naive and enigmatic. In this ongoing project I want to show the mysteriousness of the world of these brothers.

The narrative in ‘Ivan and the Moon’ is neither chronological nor event related. It does not have a strict and one-way-to-read plot. All the images are connected to each other on the level of correlated motives and on the level of hypothetical story interpretations. Each picture is supposed to provoke some inquiry about ‘What is going on?’

Moreover, the two brothers are reflections of each other. Many people might even think that they are twins. The main corpus of works contains their individual portraits, so that it is no longer clear who is who. It was also important to show that the world around the boys is itself magical and their games and fantasies are consequences of being a part of this world.

My aim is to follow the brothers through their life (I met them at a folklore expedition) and ‘document’ things that are impossible to document: the world of a boy’s fantasies, ghosts, gods, spirits of specific places, magic itself. Such things usually can not be literally depicted. As J. Szarkowski stated in his famous work ‘Mirrors and Windows’: ‘most issues of importance cannot be photographed’. My goal is to try to photograph the ‘unphotographable’ side of the matter and challenge some formal criteria of ‘classical’ documentary.”

Ivan and the Moon can be seen here

┐ Koen Huaser └

© Koen Hauser, Untitled, from the series Kosmoz, 2005

© Koen Hauser, Untitled, from the series Kosmoz, 2005

“Kosmoz deals with notions of autism and auto-symbolisation of the self in the portrait genre. Following the visual aesthetics of early psychiatric research, characters were shaped into their self fulfilling appearance by means of digital two-dimensional sculpting.”

More of Koen’s work here

║ Ari Versluis & Ellie Uyttenbroek ║

© Ari Versluis & Ellie Uyttenbroek , 19. Vagabonds, from the project Exactitudes, Rotterdam 1998

© Ari Versluis & Ellie Uyttenbroek , 96. Cassettes gang, from the project Exactitudes, London 2008

“Ari Versluis is the photographer behind Exactitudes, a long-running photographic series that documents and classifies everyday individuals in their social contexts. Together with profiler Ellie Uyttenbroek, Ari places a  similar group of individuals in a uniform framework, uniting them in their similar features while celebrating the small differences in their genetics, cultural uniforms and shared histories. A contraction of the words ‘exact’ and ‘attitudes’, Exactitudes is a study in humanity – an anthropological journey through cities, towns and villages, through class systems and neighbourhoods and family groups.”

source: a blog curated by

The Exactitudes project can be seen here

║ Hannah Streefkerk ║

© Hannah Streefkerk, No title, 2009

embroidery on picture

© Hannah Streefkerk, No title, 2009

embroidery on picture

More of Hannah’s work here

║ Guido Van der Werve ║

© Guido Van der Werve, I don’t want to be part of this 2, 2002

© Guido Van der Werve, I don’t want to be part of this 2, 2002

More of Guido’s work can be seen here

║ Emmeline de Mooij & Melanie Bonajo ║

© Emmeline de Mooij & Melanie Bonajo, Untitled, from the series Bush Compulsion, a Primitive Breakthrough in the Modern Mind, 2008-2009

© Emmeline de Mooij & Melanie Bonajo, Untitled, from the series Bush Compulsion, a Primitive Breakthrough in the Modern Mind, 2008-2009

“Melanie Bonajo and Emmeline de Mooij (1978), who are based in Amsterdam, graduated from the Gerrit Rietveld Academy with diplomas in 2002. Emmeline started creating installations, while Melanie began experimenting with photography. However, both share an approach that is close to performance, often using their bodies in their mises en scène. It would thus be inappropriate to try to associate their work with a particular medium. Accustomed to artistic collaboration, they have joined forces for the project ‘Bush Compulsion: A Primitive Breakthrough in the Modern Mind’, which is being presented at the festival. The artists ask whether the comforts of modern life have caused us to lose our links with nature and its manifestations, disease and death. Has this interconnection been lost for good? Melanie Bonajo and Emmeline de Mooij shed their clothes and every other artefact of daily life, and, naked, they spend their days in the wood. Masks, fetish objects and adornments recall the society that they left behind at the edge of the forest: these new savages are adorned with bubble wrap and motorcycle helmets. The artists experiment; their sincere approach combines artistic genres seamlessly, as they decorously tread the fresh earth. “

source: Hyères 2009

More of Emmeline’s work here

More of Melanie’s work here (and one previous post about her here)

║ Viviane Sassen ║

© Viviane Sassen, Untitled, from the series Realm

© Viviane Sassen, Untitled, from the series Realm

To see more of Viviane’s work click here

║ GiesenLeenders ║

© Maurits Giesen & Ilse Leenders, Untitled #2, from the series Mimicry, 2003

© Maurits Giesen & Ilse Leenders, Untitled #3, from the series Mimicry, 2003

To see more of GiesenLeenders’ work click here

║ Ilse Leenders ║

© Ilse Leenders, Untitled #1, from the series Absorbent Absurdness

© Ilse Leenders, Untitled #3, from the series Absorbent Absurdness

To see more of Ilse’s work click here

║ Lucia Ganieva ║

© Lucia Ganieva, Untitled, from the series The Factory

© Lucia Ganieva, Untitled, from the series The Factory

“Factory is a series of photographs taken in a textile factory in the city of Ianovo, some 275 km north east of Moscow. Ianovo was known as ‘the city of brides’, as the majority of the population was made up of women who worked in the textile industry. In the age of the Tsars, the then village was the centre of the industry in Russia, with all kinds of cloth being manufactured in more than 30 plants. These days, however, due mainly to the competition from countries with low labour costs, such as China, almost all of the factories have had to close. At the moment, no more than handful are still active. Despite this there is hope that these plants last a while longer.”

Lucia Ganieva

To see more of Lucia’s work click here

║ Lane Coder ║

© Lane Coder

© Lane Coder

To see more of Lane’s work click here

║ Gert Jan Kocken ║

© Gert Jan Kocken, from the series Amsterdam
Hotel Prins Hendrik, On the night of May 12th-13th Chet Baker, under the influence of drugs and alcohol, falls from this hotel window

© Gert Jan Kocken, from the series Amsterdam
On june 11 2001 Herman Brood commits suicide by jumping of the roof of the Amsterdam Hilton Hotel

To see more of Gert’s work click here

║Astrid Kruse Jensen ║

© Astrid Kruse Jensen, Green Street, from the series Imaginary Realities

© Astrid Kruse Jensen, Kasse, from the series Imaginary Realities

“By focussing on its less familiar aspects the space suddenly becomes alien. The elements we usually use to find our bearings are either hidden or distorted in the ‘artificial’ light. One of the results is that the viewer can begin to doubt the scale and dimensions of the image, as in Kasse and an image like Train Stop when seen just after Miniature World. Are we in a miniature model universe or the real world? Kruse Jensen’s photographs thus also question how we sense and experience our surroundings with both our bodies and our eyes. Her camera has ‘body’ – this is not a superficial gaze. Yet the images don’t only deal with the outside world at a phenomenological level. Their scenic quality also explores how space itself [architecture, fixtures, landscapes, etc.] influence the ways in which we interact. Her staging of a space reveals patterns of movement and social power structures not normally visible.“
Louise Wolthers

To see more of Astrid’s work click here

║ Rob Hornstra ║

© Rob Hornstra, Untitled #15, from the series 101 Billionaires, 2008

© Rob Hornstra, Untitled #13, from the series 101 Billionaires, 2008

© Rob Hornstra, Untitled #7, from the series 101 Billionaires, 2008

“Under Vladimir Putin’s rule, Russia has reclaimed its position among the superpowers of the world in the past eight years, the economic recession and the tumultuous nineties seemingly all but forgotten. Thanks to the country’s huge abundance of raw materials such oil and natural gas, the Russian economy is flourishing as never before. After a mere 18 years of capitalism, the January 2008 issue of Finans Magazine reported that there are currently 101 billionaires in Russia. It is difficult to detect much prosperity in the book “101 Billionaires”, which portrays an entirely different segment of the Russian population. Far away from the glitter and glamour of Moscow, the world’s most expensive city, we find the impoverished Russians, victims of the ‘tough-as-nails’ capitalism with which Russia made its name immediately after the fall of Communism.”
Rob Hornstra

To see more of Rob’s work click here

║ Levi van Veluw ║

© Levi van Veluw, Landscape I, from the series Landscapes

© Levi van Veluw, Gravel, from the series Material Transfers

Levi van Veluw´s photo series are all self-portraits, drawn and photographed by himself: a one-man-process. His works constitute elemental transfers – modifying the face as object – combining it with other stylistic elements to create a third visual object with a large visual impact. The work you see therefore is not a portrait, but an information-rich image of colour, form, texture, and content. The image contains the history of a short creative process, with the artist shifting between the entities of subject and object. Giving familiar elements such as a ballpoint-line a new context results in a confusing conflict between the objects normal associations and the new values given it in this new context. The author and object of these elemental transfers , Levi van Veluw explains his method: “I sit in front of a mirror with several objects and ideas. That day, the process takes shape, and slowly I create a new object I find interesting.”
Source: Ronmandos Gallery

More of Levi’s work can be seen here

║ Risk Hazekamp ║

© Risk Hazekamp, Under Influence/Catherine Opie, from the series Under Influence, 2007

© Risk Hazekamp, Superman, from the series Straight from Berlin, 2007

“This tension between the biological and the social -or even aesthetic- is echoed in other new works such as “Superman”. The eponymous logo stencilled onto a female chest mainlines its point about our individual body in contrast to what we feel about it or how we might actually want to look. And, interestingly for Hazekamp’s artistic development, together with the other works in the new series, it does so with a more gritty, faux documentary style that we associate with both Berlin underground cultures and German art photography. If femininity -whatever that means- has still not penetrated the flesh of Risk Hazekamp, it seems that the history of her new home certainly has.”
Ken Pratt

To see more of Risk’s work click here

║ Martin Luijendijk ║

© Martin Luijendijk, Crematieoven, from the series Edges of the city, 2005

© Martin Luijendijk, Couveuse, from the series Edges of the city, 2005

© Martin Luijendijk, Sexclub, from the series Edges of the city, 2005

“The basic idea is the entire coexistence of the city, the human society. The attention is focused on the metaphorical edges and borders of the complex society, in as many respects as possible: social, cultural, economic, religious, sexual, accommodating, mental, physical, scientific, recreational, sportive.
The series consists of neutral photos of spaces from which man seems to have temporarily withdrawn. What kind of people do normally enter into these settings, what role do they play and how do they relate to the rest of society.
Together these images give a rough sketch of the boundaries of a metropolitan network of coexistence.”
Martin Luijendijk

To see more of Martin’s work click here

║ Olga Gorissen ║

© Olga Gorissen, Acadyane, 2005

© Olga Gorissen, Berken, 2001