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Art Photography

Model Moostapha Saidi Questions the Audience’s Gaze with Highly Stylized Portraits Shot by Justin Dingwall

Photographer Justin Dingwall recently collaborated with South African model Moostapha Saidi on a series of images that speak to themes of perspective and of perception. “A Seat at the Table” was informed by Saidi’s experiences living with the skin condition vitiligo, in addition to conversations between the photographer and model. Taken at face value, the images showcase a man with missing skin pigment, but as the South Africa-based photographer explained to Colossal, the ideas and symbolism are more than skin deep.

Brightly colored and stark white sets contrast Moostapha’s dual-toned skin in each of the images. Dingwall uses precious stones and googly eyes as a commentary on the way that Moostapha is objectified by strangers who stare, point, and see him as an other because of the way he looks. “I worked with the old saying ‘a seat at the table’ to represent the idea of an opportunity to be heard, to be seen, to have a voice and an opinion, and in this way to make a difference,” he explains to Colossal. “The images that I have created with Moostapha aim to start conversations about preconceived ideas and perceptions based on appearance, and how what we see affects what we think.”

Dingwall says that during his first collaboration with the aspiring model he learned about his story and about the disease that, at first, was a challenge and later became a source of pride and confidence. “Vitiligo is a topic that I did not know much about and I am always interested to expand my world through my art and learn about something that is not seen as ‘usual,'” Dingwall tells Colossal. “I decided to create a body of work that engages with this topic on a much deeper level, and that raises questions about perspective, as well as how the media and representations subjectively perceive the world and other people.”

Because of his appearance, growing up was difficult for Moostapha, Dingwall says, but things have changed. “Through these challenges he has gained strength and confidence from looking so different. He no longer sees his vitiligo as a hindrance, but as something precious and unique… As in previous bodies of work, I hope in these images to highlight beauty in difference. In these images it is now Moostapha who is staring back at the viewer. Questioning our gaze.”

“A Seat at the Table” has helped Saidi pursue his dream of becoming a model, as he is now signed to one of the top agency’s in South Africa. In 2019 Justin Dingwall plans to create more images in the series, has three new bodies of work planned, and a few upcoming exhibitions in Europe. Follow him on Instagram for future updates and to see more of his photography.

Art Photography

Wire Sculptures of Hands and Faces Come to Life When Overlaid with Digital Elements by Yuichi Ikehata

Yuichi Ikehata combines photography, sculpture, and digital editing to create hybrid works that meld together reality and his own fictionalized interpretation. The eerie humanoid forms are pierced with holes that reveal rudimentary structures below their plaster-like skin, making each appear to be in varying states of decay. To create these digital manipulations, Ikehata first photographs his own body in different poses. Using wire, he then three-dimensionally recreates its form in simple structures. Finally, the artist adds parts of his original image onto the sculpture through digital editing, reintroducing a fractured reality to the wire imitation. You can see more of his work on his website, Instagram, and Tumblr. (via Hi Fructose)

Art

Oil Paintings by Clive Head Layer Gestures to Express the Passage of Time

British artist Clive Head captures the complex beauty of everyday movements in his dizzying oil paintings. His long career has seen a dramatic evolution of his style, from early work in the tradition of Realism to more recent math-inspired works. Head first gained prominence in the 1990s for his Realist urban landscapes, but began to experiment with spatial mathematics in the 2000’s, sparking his current intuitive style.

“Rejecting the conventions of perspective, the resulting panoramas seamlessly merged different spaces into plausible but impossible totalities,” a statement on the artist’s website explains. Often set in cities, Head’s painting’s depict travelers on public transit or customers at coffee shops, environments where frequent and dense movements are natural. Each painting contains fractured gestures that demonstrate changes in time, while also presenting a psychological perspective.

The artist, who lives and works in York, U.K., has exhibited his paintings widely, and previously founded and chaired the Fine Art department at U.C.Scarbrough for York University. In addition to painting, Head also works in printmaking, drawing, and has published essays on painting. You can explore more of the artist’s work on his website. (via Hi-Fructose)

Design History Illustration

Who’s She: A Laser-Cut Guessing Game That Celebrates Accomplished Women Throughout History

Who’s She is a new guessing game by Polish designer Zuzia Kozerska (previously) which celebrates the achievements of famous women across the world. The laser-cut wooden board flips up to reveal the faces of 28 painters, athletes, scientists, and astronauts, in a similar style the classic Guess Who? game did from the late 1970s. Instead of posing superficial questions such as “does your character have glasses?” the game asks players to inquire about achievements and contributions like “did she win a Nobel Prize?”.

Faces range from the early 20th-century painter Frida Kahlo to contemporary athlete Serena Williams, all illustrated in watercolor portraits by artist Daria Gołąb. The game is currently seeking funding on Kickstarter. You can follow the evolution of the project on Instagram. (via My Modern Met)

Illustration

Illustrations by Simon Prades Entangle Human Emotions with the Natural World

Simon Prades (previously) uses muted color palettes to convey feelings of introspection, inquisitiveness, and even rage in his editorial illustrations. His work often features human portraits interwoven with natural elements such as coiling snakes and growing plants which combine detailed realism with abstracted and surreal environments. The German-Spanish artist and designer currently lives and works in Saarbrücken, Germany, and is regularly commissioned by a wide variety of publications—from Rolling Stone to Outside Magazine. You can see more from the artist on his website, where he sells select artworks as prints, and on Behance.

Photography

A New Book Reveals a Colorful Side to Vivian Maier’s Renowned Street Photography

Nanny and self-taught photographer Vivian Maier (1926–2009) (previously here and here) kept nearly 150,000 photographic images, including street photography and self-portraits, hidden from the world until an estate sale in 2007 revealed a large bulk of her secretive hobby. Since 2010 her photographs have been widely exhibited in galleries and museums across the world, and were the subject of the 2013 documentary Finding Vivian Maier, which was nominated for an Academy Award.

Although her mostly Chicago and New York-based photographs have become infamous in the decade since their discovery, her color images have been less prevalent due to the technical challenges involved in their development and recovery. This month the largest monograph of her full-color photographs was published by Harper Collins, which includes images pulled from the roughly 40,000 Ektachrome color slides spanning the last 30 years of her life. Vivian Maier: The Color Work explores over 150 of her colorful images with details that have been gathered about her story and photographic process. The book also features a forward by photographer Joel Meyerowitz and text by Colin Westerbeck, a former curator of photography at the Art Institute of Chicago.

“Maier was a self-invented polymath of a photographer,” writes Westerbeck in the book. “The one advantage Maier gained from keeping her photography to herself was an exemption from contradiction and condescension. She didn’t have to worry about either the orthodoxy or the approval of her peers.”

Vivian Maier: The Color Work was created in partnership with Howard Greenberg Gallery in New York City, who will be presenting an exhibition of the same title opening November 14, 2018 and running through January 5, 2019. Several of the color photographs included in the exhibition will be presented for the first time. You can see more of Maier’s black and white and color photography on this portfolio site dedicated to her collection, and you can purchase a copy of the new book on Amazon. (via Chicago Magazine)

Art Food

Pixelated Glitches Interrupt Painted Portraits of Victorian Families, Still Lifes, and Birds

The Milan-based painter Aldo Sergio uses paint to warp perception, creating portraits and still life paintings which blur the boundary between the digital and the physical, and the traditional and the contemporary. In one of his paintings, three men in clerical clothing look inquisitively at a pixelated bunch of bananas, and in another parts of a Victorian family, from their faces to conventional garments, are pixelated in rectangular lines. In a third piece a couple poses before a selection of indoor houseplants while a hen with a blurred leg stands next to their feet.

Sergio uses traditional painting methods to capture portraits of Victorian families, bowls of fruit, and birds, and then distorts these objects by covering them in small ‘glitches.’ Sergio builds tensions between objects, people and space, and his carefully painted glitch-like malfunctions to give his artworks an unusual movement, making a stark contrast to the stillness and seriousness of traditional paintings.

His solo exhibition at Galleria Patricia Armocida in Milan runs until the 30th of November, 2018. You can see more of his pixelated paintings on his website and Instagram.