Photography

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Photography

Vital Impacts Launches a Winter Print Sale with Photos from Jane Goodall, David Doubilet, and Beth Moon to Raise Money for Conservation

Within its first year, the woman-led nonprofit Vital Impacts raised $1,500,000 for conservation and humanitarian efforts through print sales from dozens of lauded photographers. The organization, which is led by Ami Vitale and Eileen Mignoni, just announced its latest initiative that features 145 stunning images and composites capturing the stunning breadth of the natural world. Included in this collection are hand-signed portraits from Jane Goodall and works from multiple artists previously featured on Colossal, including the dramatic and intimate glimpses of foxes captured by Konsta Punkka, David Doubilet’s underwater vistas, Beth Moon’s famous documentation of ancient Baobab trees, and Mitch Dobrowner’s sinister storms.

Sixty percent of the proceeds will be donated to Jane Goodall Institute’s Roots and Shoots and Vital Impacts’ own grants and initiatives. Shop the collection on the Vital Impacts site.

 

Art Craft Photography

Top of the Stack: Colossal’s Favorite Art Books of 2022

As we near the end of 2022, we’re taking a look back at the year, starting with the books we found most compelling, impressive, and inspirational. We’ve published dozens of articles on artist monographs and compendiums of broader topics across art and design and science and history over the last 12 months, and these are the 10 titles that impacted us most.

Head to Bookshop to browse all 25 books on our list, including the highly anticipated Hilma AF Klint Catalogue Raisonné, a glimpse into rarely-seen works by Ruth Asawa, and a dive into the history of protest art.

 

Ocean, Exploring the Marine World

Across its 352 pages, Ocean, Exploring the Marine World dives into the planet’s notoriously vast and mysterious aquatic ecosystems, traveling across the continents and three millennia to uncover the stunning diversity of life below the surface. It presents science and history alongside art and illustration, including biological renderings by Ernst Haeckel, Katsushika Hokusai’s woodblock prints, and works by artists like Kerry James Marshall, Vincent van Gogh, and Yayoi Kusama.

 

Nick Cave: Forothermore

From floral Soundsuits and found-object sculptures to a multicolor web of millions of pony beads, Forothermore surveys the 30-plus-year career of artist Nick Cave and accompanies a massive retrospective of the same name.

 

Paint with Thread: A Step-By-Step Guide to Embroidery Through the Seasons

Learn the distinctive stitching techniques of artist Emillie Ferris with Paint with Thread: A Step-By-Step Guide to Embroidery Through the Seasons. The how-to volume contains instructions for creating five whimsical projects that utilize Ferris’s long and short stitches to create textured portrayals of flora and fauna.

 

Great Women Painters 

Spanning nearly 350 pages, Great Women Painters highlights more than 300 artists across 500 years and a vast array of movements and aesthetics. The book pairs icons like Frida Kahlo and Leonora Carrington with contemporary artists like Ewa Juszkiewicz and Katharina Grosse in a broad and diverse overview of the women who profoundly impact art today.

 

An Alternative History of Photography

From East Asia to West Africa and New Zealand to Uzbekistan, this volume traverses the globe as it acknowledges the recognized greats of the medium and uncovers overlooked artists, traditions, and techniques. The book contains hundreds of images across decades, including works from Western icons like Robert Frank, Diane Arbus, Man Ray, and Ansel Adams and African studio photographers like Sanlé Sory, Michel Kameni, and Malick Sidibe.

 

Olafur Eliasson, Experience

This enormous, nearly 500-page monograph explores the inimitable career of artist Olafur Eliasson. The edition comprises a breadth of works from the 1990s to today, including “The Weather Project” from 2003 (shown above) and the more recent “Life,” which flooded Fondation Beyeler with murky green waters.

 

Prime, Art’s Next Generation

Across nearly 450 pages, PRIME, Art’s Next Generation offers a broad and insightful survey of the Millenials defining the future of the art world, including Jordan Casteel, Tau Lewis, and Firelei Báez. The tome takes a broad look at what’s emerged from a cultural and creative landscape shaped by the internet.

 

Jean-Michel Basquiat: King Pleasure

This monograph accompanies the expansive King Pleasure exhibition that opened earlier this year in Chelsea and offers an intimate and holistic glimpse at the life that inspired Jean-Michel Basquiat’s oeuvre. The 336-page book features a broad array of works, interviews with family members, and an in-depth consideration of his life.

 

Art and Climate Change

We’re continually concerned with the effects of the climate crisis, and this collection within Thames&Hudson’s World of Art series draws together an array of works that respond to the current moment.

 

Shop all 25 titles on our list on Bookshop.

Photography

Salt Extraction Sites Turn Landscapes into Vivid Tapestries in Tom Hegen’s Aerial Photos

Since 2018, German photographer Tom Hegen (previously) has been soaring above regions from western Australia and Senegal to France and Spain as he documents the vivid landscapes of salt production. His mesmerizing aerial images peer down at evaporation ponds that carve the earth into a patchwork of vibrant hues. “What attracted me was the graphic and abstract appearance of these landscapes, which almost has a painterly quality. This is also the core feature that aerial photography has to offer: an unfamiliar few at ordinary things that surround us,” Hegen shares about the project.

Spanning nearly 300 pages, a forthcoming book titled Salt Works compiles more than 160 images from the series. Although their footprints vary widely, many of the areas spotlighted approach extraction in a similar manner: Harvesters often route seawater into these fields or small pockets of land, and the sun and wind help evaporate the liquid, leaving the crystalline minerals behind. Micro bacteria tint the salt into striking pastures of rose, aqua, and ochre, transforming the areas into rich tapestries of color.

Shop prints and posters from the series on Hegen’s site and pre-order Salt Works. Find more on Instagram and Behance.

 

Art Photography

Quirky Clothesline Creatures Saunter Across Helga Stentzel’s Landscape Illusions

A wooly sweater returns to its material roots in the latest creatures to spring from Helga Stentzel’s clothesline menagerie. The London-based artist captivated audiences last year with her whimsically strung farm animals that appeared to put old shirts and jackets out to pasture. Now, Stentzel’s collection of characters includes a dinosaur of bleached white undergarments, a sweatpants camel, and the aforementioned sweater sheep. Positioned against expansive views of deserts and mountainous areas, the stylish illusions take a playful approach to laundry day.

Alongside these creatures, Stentzel has been creating 3D works, some of which are on view from November 18, 2022, to March 1, 2023, at CXC Art Museum in Seoul. Pick up a print in her shop, and follow her on Instagram to keep an eye on the additions to what the artist terms “household surrealism.”

 

Photography

Tiers of Dyed Water Burst into Perfectly Concentric Circles in Jack Long’s Energetic Photos

For at least a decade, Jack Long has paired his day job in advertising photography with a growing archive of personal projects that explore the energetic, dynamic qualities of liquid. His latest series centers on circular pools of water that splash outward, creating colorfully tiered layers that build up the dimension of a typically gravity-bound material. Although the liquid appears to be spraying outward after being punctured by an object dropped from above, it is actually gurgling upward from a custom-designed fountain. Long shares with Colossal that the machine took about two years to build and produces pools that reach about 30 inches in diameter, which he has to photograph within a fraction of a second to capture the perfectly concentric effect.

You can find more of Long’s hypnotic works on Behance, Instagram, and his site.

 

Photography

Moss Drapes from Trees in Ethereal Photographs of England’s Forests by Neil Burnell

England has long been a haven for rich woodlands of oak, birch, hazel, and pine, chronicled in famous stories like Robin Hood’s Sherwood Forest or the real-life 11th century king William the Conqueror, who established a “Forest Law” that claimed woodlands as hunting grounds for kings. In the 19th and 20th centuries, native forests were increasingly transformed into pasture for grazing livestock, replaced with modern developments, or re-planted with commercial timber. The remarkable atmosphere of Dartmoor’s forests are captured by Devon-based photographer Neil Burnell (previously), who focuses on the mystical, otherworldly environments through all four seasons.

Burnell was inspired as a child by a visit to Wistman’s Wood, a remote, upland area of old, gnarled oak. “Little was I to know the lasting impression this would leave me with as a young lad, as I find myself re-imagining how I felt, and how I could spread this awe and wonder through my passion for photography,” he explains. Although Dartmoor National Park currently advises that visitors avoid walking through Wistman’s Wood to allow it to heal from damage caused during lockdowns, Burnell’s images offer a glimpse of moss-coated limbs and fern-covered forest floors that seem to freeze time. He also visits dense stands of conifers, with canopies that create dreamlike effects as they block the sunlight from reaching the ground below.

Burnell often teaches workshops around South West England that focus on nature and landscape photography, which you can learn more about on his website. You can also find more of his work on Behance.