highlike

Brodbeck & de Barbuat

Les 1000 vies d’Isis
Les 1000 vies d’Isis (The 1000 lives of Isis) highlights the birth of an imaginary character created entirely by computer. A virtual identity whose daily life is imagined in images. The fictitious staging of these moments photographed in the South of France interrogates Photography and Portraiture by introducing a questioning on the nature of images, their link to reality and to the identity of the living.

Random International

Presence and Erasure
Presence and Erasure is a portrait machine that explores the reality of automated facial recognition and how people relate to their self-image, instinctively and emotionally. Within a given spatial domain, the artwork constantly scans for faces in the vicinity and photographs them. When the artwork’s algorithm detects a certain quality within a photograph, this image is temporarily printed at large scale by exposing a photochromic surface to light impulses. Each automated portrait remains for little more than a minute, before gradually dissolving into blankness. RANDOM INTERNATIONAL began to combine transient mark-making with automated portraiture early on in their practice, in 2008. Presence and Erasure marks the latest development in this body of work and assumes a minimal, industrial aesthetic that references their earliest studies on this theme. The physical impact of facial recognition and machine vision is emphasised by the exposure of the printing process itself, contrasted against the aesthetic of the high resolution portraits generated. RANDOM INTERNATIONAL intend this as a counter to the perception of surveillance footage as always being low quality, aiming to create a deeper reflection on the nature of surveillance today as well as the resounding cognitive and emotional dissonances.

Alma Haser

birdgirl
It’s hard to pin down what media German artist Alma Haser actually works with: Her series involve photography, cut-up collages, rephotographing prints, and weaving together multiple images to strike a balance of time and space. Take I Always Have To Repeat Myself, for example. Each piece layers two or more prints either physically (weaving or overlaying strips of different photographs to add a sense of depth and dimension) or within a new frame—a number of the pieces feature sitters manipulating photographs of themselves, playing with perspective to offer and dizzying and disorienting fresh take on portraiture and image making.

LAURA WAGNER

selfportrait with tongue
Selbstportrait mit Zunge is a video portrait that shows the artist in profile, wearing the traditional dress and hairstyle of her homeland, stretching out her tongue and moving it slowly. Mirroring the non-durational aspect of painting, a conventional means of portraiture, the work isn’t marked by beginning or end points. Selbstportrait mit Zunge challenges the notion of temporality as an essential component of video, a medium that is normally defined by the presence of durational elements.more

Omar Victor Diop

The Studio of Vanities

Oumy Ndour – Journalist, TV Anchor, Movie Director

The result is a collection of individual portraits, striking and captivating in their charm. Diop carefully chooses backgrounds and patterns to strengthen the subject’s personality and cultural references. Therefore, the colour of kenté fabric flawlessly matches the outfit of casually posing fashion designer, Selly Raby Kane. The clothes of artist Mame-Diarra Niang and model Aminata Faye fuse with an African background pattern. Using this particular approach, Diop becomes part of a tradition of African studio photography epitomized by the likes of Malick Sidibé and Seydou Keïta. He honours their pioneering work in his own creations, making use of contemporary techniques. Instead of merely creating striking images of an attractive young generation, Diop defines the images during the portraiture process, ensuring that decisions regarding pose, background and props are taken together with the subject. This makes it possible for Diop to come closer to the essence of the portrayed individual, and therefore do justice to the multiplicity and energy of Dakar’s contemporary cultural scene.

KOEN HAUSER

VLISCO HOMMAGE À L’ART
The Hommage à l’Art series was commissioned by Vlisco and it honours Vlisco’s art by placing their heritage of iconic drawings in the spotlight. These drawings were recreated into icons as gold statues in photographs inspired by Vlisco’s heritage and the women who wear Vlisco fabrics in a proud, almost regal way, as in royal portraiture.

ARRON DUNWORTH

Dunworth shows a real ability to capture portraiture in a unique and visually exquisite way. He often plays with traditional ideals of masculinity and femininity- with exotic and visually revealing results. His subjects are elegantly poised, producing beautiful curves and patterns of light.

PRZEMEK DZIENIS

I can’t speak, I’m sorry
Przemek Dzienis (born 1984) – graduated from the National Film School in Lodz. He works mainly with portraiture and analyses the relation between the man and everyday items. Przemek Dzienis has also experimented with the notion of multiplication, with figures and objects and their activity in space

Jimmy Robert

Metallica
Robert typically uses photographic portraiture as a starting point for his works on paper, gently breaking down divisions between two and three dimensions, image and object. In some cases Robert uses found photographs that he tears, collages, tapes, and crumples before digitally scanning them and pinning them to the wall […] Extending into the space of the gallery, these works create a relationship to the viewer’s body while underscoring a sense of impermanence.

olya oleinic

Thought up
Olya Oleinic is a Moldavian photographer based in Amsterdam and London. Her passion lies in creating still life images and staged portraiture. I am interested in the contemporary means of visual communication, which is why my work is often a blend of several mediums, combined to compliment each other in a subtle way.

ERWIN BLUMENFELD

اروين بلومنفلد
埃尔文布鲁门费尔德
ארווין בלומנפלד
ЭРВИН БЛЮМЕНФЕЛЬД

Erwin Blumenfeld, regarded as one of the most influential photographers of the twentieth century. An experimenter and innovator, he produced an extensive body of work throughout his thirty-five year career including black and white portraits and nudes, celebrity portraiture, advertising campaigns and his renowned fashion photography.

Parker Fitzgerald and Riley Messina

Overgrowth
Inspired by a pursuit of beauty, Riley combines classically thoughtful botanical designs with Parker’s carefully considered film images in an expression of the multifaceted relationship between humankind and nature. The two artists contrast anonymous portraiture with sweeping landscapes in an attempt to capture both the malleable and untamed aspects of the natural world.

GOLAN LEVIN AND ZACHARY LIEBERMAN

Reface [Portrait Sequencer]

Reface [Portrait Sequencer] by Golan Levin and Zachary Lieberman (2007) is a surreal video mash-up that composes endless combinations of its visitors’ faces. Based on the Victorian “Exquisite Corpse” parlor game, the Reface installation records and dynamically remixes brief video slices of its viewers’ mouths, eyes and brows. Reface uses face-tracking techniques to allow automatic alignment and segmentation of its participants’ faces. As a result, visitors to the project can move around freely in front of the display without worrying about lining up their face for the system’s camera. The video clips recorded by the project are “edited” by the participants’ own eye blinks. Blinking also triggers the display to advance to the next set of face combinations. Through interactions with an image wholly constructed from its own history of being viewed, Reface makes possible a new form of inventive play with one’s own appearance and identity. The resulting kinetic portraiture blends the personalities and genetic traits of its visitors to create a “generative group portrait” of the people in the project’s locale.

HELEN CHADWICK

海伦查德威克
ヘレン·チャドウィック
헬렌 채드윅
Хелен Чедвик
Vanitas II
In this self-portrait, Chadwick uses her own body to examine the politics and associations surrounding female portraiture and the nude. There is a direct reference to the long tradition in art of female Vanitas figures, contemplating their own image in a mirror. They illustrate the fragility of physical beauty and all human creation.
Here, the artist gazes into a mirror, which reflects one of her works, the Oval Court installation, her own ‘Garden of Delights’. It is a defiant image, confronting the inevitable process of change but not as a de-personalised or idealised nude. Rather she portrays herself as a creator in control of her own image.