Christa Parravani

Benjamin Fraser (from Whatever I Was in Life: Spoon River)

C-Print

24x30" edition of 15

32x40" edition of 5

40x50" edition of 3

Christa Parravani’s beautifully constructed imagery utilizes person and landscape as integral characters in the telling of a narrative. In both her Kindred and Whatever I Was In Life: Spoon River series, the elements contained within her frame work to convey a response both emotional and intellectual and confront, or challenge the viewer to question an individuals role within a photograph.

Sandy Kim

Untitled (Smoke)

C-Print

10x16" edition of 15

20x30" edition of 10

Occasionally you come across a photographer who's photographs resonate with personal honesty. The images come across as portrayals of real life, with real people in real scenarios.

Sandy Kim is a young artist who is never far from a camera. She captures images of what she knows, the people she surrounds herself with and the people who cross their path. She documents her everyday life without appearing documentary.

She is at ease photographing a concert, as she is photographing self-portraits of her and her boyfriend's intimate moments. Her camera work seems effortless, and it is, as her camera is an extention of how she sees, thinks processes and remembers. She has a feeling for natural light, A feeling, not a knowledge. Anyone can learn to use natural light, not everyone can feel it. It's like intuition.

Perhaps Kim's allure is in the level of access she allows us into her personal life. It's never contrived. It's a candid, without being candid. It's shocking without being grotesque. It's sexy and true and giving and never holds back.

Sarah Sudhoff

Murder, Male 40 Years Old (I), 2010

From the Series At The Hour Of Our Death

Archival Pigment Print

30x40"

Edition of 9

$1,500

At The Hour of Our Death

Death, like birth, is part of a process. However, the processes of death are often shielded from view. Today in Western society most families leave to a complete stranger the responsibility of preparing a loved one’s body for its final resting place. Traditional mourning practices, which allowed for the creation of Victorian hair jewelry or other memento mori items, have fallen out of fashion. Now the stain of death is quickly removed and the scene is cleaned and normalized. As Phillipe Aries writes, “Society no longer observes a pause; the disappearance of an individual no longer affects its continuity”.

At age of seventeen, I lost a friend to suicide. While visiting his home the day after the event, I witnessed a clean-up crew steam cleaning the carpet in his bedroom. All physical traces of the past 24 hours had vanished.

These large-scale color photographs capture and fully illuminate swatches of bedding, carpet and upholstery marked with the signs of the passing of human life. The fabrics which are first removed by a trauma scene clean up crew, are relocated to a warehouse before being incinerated. I tack each swatch to the wall and use the crew’s floodlights to illuminate the scene. The images are my attempt to slow the moments before and after death to a single frame, to allow what is generally invisible to become visible, and to engage with a process from which we have become disconnected.

Silas Barrett

Unspecified Places

No. 21

6"x8"

Archival Pigment Print

Edition of 25

$100 (yes that is right...$100)

Silas Barrett photographs objects, landmarks and things we ordinarily pass over in a casual glance, but may in some way remain in our collective consciousness. By removing the object or place from its orignial context, he seeks to recontextualize what he sees and create a new/alternate meaning. Through the disintegration of resolution, the purposeful increase in grain, digital noise, or the desaturation of colors which are a result of camera imprefections and post production tweaking, each piece acts as its own detached memory, once real, now manufactured.

Mark Zibert

Untitled

20x24"

C-Print

Edition of 10

$1250

Mark Zibert was born in 1977 in Toronto and has been a professional commercial and documentary photographer since 2000.  Since his first national campaign for Nike when he was 23, he has been working with editorial and advertising agencies on a global scale.  His project for the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing required three months to portray the nation’s most elite athletes.  The effort won China its first Cannes Gold Lion and also took the honor of Photography Campaign of the Year at the Lucie Awards.  For the past few years, Zibert has been travelling to African nations (Rwanda, Uganda, Sierra Leone and Tanzania) to shoot documentary work for various non-government organizations working to improve the lives of refugees, former child combatants and young people affected by HIV/AIDS.  He’s currently based in Toronto, but much of his time is spent on location. In addition to creating still images for national and worldwide markets, he is now also working as a commercial director

Robert Kingston

Montauk Series no. 1-18

9"x12"

Acrylic on Canvas

Robert Kingston’s paintings are part of his own lineage of abstraction that has evolved over some twenty years. These paintings are about painting. Kingston’s work has always arisen from an earnest search for resolution in a range of gestures, movements and erasures. The appearance and meaning of the resolution has developed over years in the meandering progression of the creative process.

Kingston's current chapter of work continues his investigation into the possibilities of paint. The labors are personal, but also come from a place of acutely studied history of art, design and music. Notions of Cy Twombly and Paul Klee, among others, slightly register, but while Kingston embraces this history, his paintings remain clearly contemporary, considered and decidedly personal.

Julia Fullerton-Batten

Yellow Dress, 2011

From the Awkward Series

31x25" edition of 15

54x40" edition of 7

Since 2004, Julia Fullerton-Batten has been working with the idea of adolescence. Her ground breaking series “Teenage Stories” placed pre-teen girls in situations where reality and non-reality collided. Her subjects were introduced with new responsibilities, torn from their lives of day-dreaming and fantasy. With her following series “School Play” and “In Between” Fullerton-Batten guided her subjects through their teenage years, confronting issues of self-awareness, social peer pressures, conformity and their place within their domestic lives.

“Awkward” is Fullerton-Batten’s newest series, where her subjects now face coming adulthood and the internal and external feelings and confusions dealing with the onset of their sexuality and their relations to each other.

Fullerton-Batten’s highly stylized photographs mirror the culture these young adults are brought up in. Her subjects live in a new MTV world of high fashion, social awareness and a mature becoming. In this light, Fullerton-Batten comments on the world of advertising and media persuasion without the need of products. She strips the image to it's essentials: Subject and environment and through composition, lighting and gesture intertwines non-reality and reality seamlessly continuing the progression of a teenage girls life.

Craig Roper

Coyboys and Indians

Bundles 1989-2006

Two 5.5x7" bundles consisting of layered Silver Gelatin Prints, tar roofing paper, carpet felt, cardboard and twine presented on a wood shelf

sold

The first time I saw a Craig Roper Bundle was back in 1990 in Los Angeles. Bennett Roberts and Richard Heller (Richard/Bennett Gallery) had a bowl full of them in a group show. It was a big bowl and there were a lot of Bundles to choose from. That was a long time ago, and these are the last remaining Bundles.

What is a Craig Roper Bundle? A Bundle is a collection of photographs (actual silver gelatin photographs) sandwiched in with layers of carpet felt, various printed/non-printed cardboard, tar roofing paper, all remnants from Roper's home improvement projects. Bundles are all tied together tightly with twine and sit upon a wooden shelf. They are perfect little collections of memories and obscure relationships, packed with humor and all fully tactile.

Laura London

Rock Star Moment no. 2

30x30"

AP no. 2 (print edition of 3 sold out)

C-Print Photograph

London’s photographs of young subjects express the rules of engagement of contemporary teenagers, and depict a new embodiment of culture. Seeking their own meaning and identity, in a cross-cultural synonymy, they shape their illusions, their truths, their morality, through epic ordeals and heroic quests. These youthful subjects reveal themselves by their bodily actions and their defiant poses, creating a crucial taxonomy of signs. We can grasp their anxiety, their struggles, their sensuality, their ultimate inner mystery. London appropriates their crucial reality well, transforming them into iconic profiles of our contemporary society.

Marco Delogu

Cardinals and Criminals

6x8"

edition of 25

edition no.1-10 available in complete sets of 20 prints

Archival Pigment Print

$800

Marco Delogu has always embarked on projects focused on groups of people who have experiences or idioms in common, and in doing so has always drawn inspiration from his own life.

The idea of photographing Vatican Cardinals for example began with Delogu’s uncle who was an Archbishop. Photographed in their private chapels, their apartments, austere or regal, in the magnificent Vatican buildings or in hospital beds, these portraits recall the iconography of classical painting while being in the language of contemporary portraiture.

Captivity, Delogu’s portraits of criminals in Rome’s Rebibbia Prison stem from his fear of imprisonment, which was a constant concern for the people of his generation and their extreme expressions of the political struggles of the 70’s. After twenty years, many of Delogu’s former schoolmates are still in prison.

Cardinals and Criminals are complete opposites. Each represent societal extremes: Good and Evil, however, through Delogu’s lens, these opposites manafest a collision of ethos and pathos. Delogu sees each person as inhabitants within a web of imposed and self-imposed rules and regulations that are indecipherable to those who do not know their experience. Beyond the rules are men and women just trying to survive.

Cara Ober

Forgotten Bestsellers

2010

60x80"

Acrylic and Mixed Media on Canvas

Cara Ober layers drawing, painting, and printmaking into mixed media works that reinterpret sentimental imagery. Working in series, Ober combines culturally mediated imagery from children’s schoolbooks, home décor, historical texts, and greeting cards to explore notions of authenticity, appropriation, personal identity, and vocabulary.

Ober’s narrative works utilize specific phrases and fonts to suggest multiple voices, perspectives, and time periods. Rather than illustrating the text, the images create discord, layering metaphorical and nonsensical outcomes over personal notation. These works reveals the inadequacy of words in expressing the complexity of experience, and exploit the multiple meanings within one simple phrase, exposing the gap between meaning and language. Painterly gesture alternately reveals and conceals Ober’s imagery, uniting disparate elements into a palimpsest where memory and commentary merge into a visual diary.

Mi Zhou

Girl with Dog

Zambahua, Ecuador

15x15" edition of 10 $800

30x30" edition of 15 $1600

Archival Pigment Print

I loved these images from the moment I saw them.

Mi Zhou's usage of rich and ethereal blacks, both dark and mysterious lead the viewer into a reality stepped in contrasts. With the feel of classic street photography, immediate and needing to tell a tale, each photograph is a collection of line and form that flows within his frame. His subjects, are the downtrodden, the helpless, the beautiful, the exotic and the strange. Zhou's images guide you in and lets you linger long after you have turned your head.

Vikram Kushwah

Ofelea

29x35.5" edition of 8

20x24" edition of 8

Archival Pigment Print

The feeling of the uncanny, as Sigmund Freud points out, is one of confused fear, something that you feel when confronted with something that was meant to remain hidden, locked away and has now come out into the open. This feeling is certainly not unambiguous. It is this ambiguity itself that makes the mind wander. The wandering mind opens many doors. Behind these closed doors lies what we call the imagination. There are more doors behind the ones that have been opened. They all whisper to each other – about what lies beyond – engaging and gripping the psyche.

Vikram Kushwah's work is a portrait of the romantic notions of the existence of a parallel world of escapism and the child-like reaffirmation that such a realm exists, breaking free from the bondage of the rational thinking and rule driven adult world.

Ken Rosenthal

Intersect (The Forest)

2011

Archival Pigment Print on Hahnemuhle Cotton Rag

24x16" edition of 10

printed on 24x32" paper

Over the last couple years, Ken Rosenthal has slowly been inching his way past the imagery he is best known for, not an easy (or wise) task in an art world where recognition and consistency are expectations. His style, a dreamy mix of mysterious contrasts that created background for blurred subjects are as poetic as they are steeped in subtext.

His latest body of work “The Forest” forgoes the blur and focuses on the patterns naturally developing in a dense forest glade. A combination of overgrowth, fallen trees and intertwining branches and vines instills a sense of mystery, a tense excitement where one looks for something, anything. Much like that long hike on a trail far from civilization, what has enveloped you is a feeling of otherworldliness. Not just one of chaos and disorder, but of beauty and stillness.

Rosenthal’s stylistic transition achieves a photograph that is beautiful in its’ formality while keeping that sense of tension, a subtext where something may have occurred, or is occurring. He keeps you moving through his image, searching the depth and the density for clues to the realization the image is not about what is pictured, but about what was found.

Valentina de Matha

Untitled

2010

Archival Pigment Print

16x20" edition of 9

26x40" edition of 9

40x60" edition of 9

Valentina De' Mathà has been on fire lately. Coming off a strong showing at the 54th Venice Biennale where she represented the Abruzzo region at the Italian Pavilion, Valentina has crossed multi-media lines of sculpture, photographics, film, painting, drawing and performance. Her Biennale piece entitled Silenzio consisted of 308 earthen paper casts of figures which represented those who died in the 2009 L’Aquila earthquake that devastated the region.

De' Mathà’s work is based on the interaction of the forces between man and nature. Their behaviors fuel emotion and reaction and bring about the best and worst of ourselves in the face of sudden unpredictable change.

In this photograph, a young male, contemporary in appearance is depicted in a stance associated in traditional religious characterization. The image gives us the simplest of clues, relying on our collective inference to draw conclusions and complete the narrative. It presses at our emotions, challenging our notions of the origin of the figure.

Valentina De' Mathà was born in Itlay and currently lives and works in Switzerland.

David DiMichele

Apollonian and Dionysian

2010

Digital C-Print

42x55" edition of 5

$6500

Los Angeles based artist David DiMichele creates the fantastic. His environments follow contemporary trend to construct the monumental, to surround the viewer with visual stimulus. His work however is assembled, not in the cavernous halls and galleries of museums and art centers, but on a table in his studio.

DiMichele builds his environments as finely detailed dioramas and then he photographs them. His "pseudodocumentary" photographs comment on the way we see and experience the monumental art that it pays homage to. Not often can the public experience the physical sense of an enourmous installation. Most commonly, we see the work through a reproduction or website. Working in this manner, DiMichele can take the "installation shot" much further. Controling light, angle and composition. And heighten the experience.

Polly Chandler

Lay Your Head Where My Heart Used To Be

2010

Archival Pigment Print

16x20" (12x16" image) edition of 10

30x40" (24x34" image) edition of 5

Let it be known, here at POTW we love the poetic image. Striking, dramatic, thought provoking narratives that send the imagination into deep reverie and create that beautiful feeling of wonderment. Which brings us to the work of Polly Chandler whose images possess everything just mentioned.

Fueled by her emotions and experiences, Chandler's imagery is a cohesive mix of subject and environment, brought together by her perfect sense of composition. Her latest project is an interpretation of the music of Tom Waits, and however visual Waits' lyrics may be, Chandler has personalized each image creating a personal narrative that, much like a Waits song can be interpreted and reinterpreted to suit the viewer.

Each image in her series "You Build It Up, You Wreck It Down" is a beautiful composition in subject: people, architecture, object that form a complex sense of being. That sense is illustrated through the usage of the person, often isolated, but not quite alone, Chandler's figures, much like the angels of Wim Wenders "Wings of Desire," dwell within this space and whether they are lost, or simply wandering is unanswerable. Her images ask a question that we all ask of ourselves at some point in our lives..

Newsha Tavakolian

Listen

2010

Digital Chromogneic Print

53x44" edition of 7

only one image available

Newsha Tavakolian began work as a professional photographer at the age of 16 years old for the Women's daily newspaper ZAN in Tehran, Iran. By the time she turned 21, she was covering war conflicts and social documentary stories in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Yemen for Time, Newsweek, Stern, New York Times Magazine and many others. Her work deals primarily with Women's issues and crosses the borders between documentary and fine art.

For her latest project Listen, Tavakolian photographed six female professional singers in Iran, who, due to religious tenets are not allowed to sing solo, perform in public or record CD's. For the series, Tavakolian also produced mock CD covers and filmed videos of the performers singing heartfelt ballads, only to remove the vocal tracks leaving the Women voiceless through an emotional performance. Her images and video installations discuss the barriers dividing her culture and how Women's freedoms and forms of expression are suppressed.

Broken Glass
60x42"
edition of 5
Lightjet Photograph

Los Angeles based artist David DiMichele creates the fantastic. His environments follow contemporary trend to construct the monumental, to surround the viewer with visual stimulus. His work however is assembled, not in the cavernous halls and galleries of museums and art centers, but on a table in his studio.

DiMichele builds his environments as finely detailed dioramas and then he photographs them. His "pseudodocumentary" photographs comment on the way we see and experience the monumental art that it pays homage to. Not often can the public experience the physical sense of an enourmous installation. Most commonly, we see the work through a reproduction or website. Working in this manner, DiMichele can take the "installation shot" much further. Controling light, angle and composition. And heighten the experience.

Chris Anthony

Number 12 (Venetian Series)

23.5x28"

edition of 7

Archival Pigment Print

Chris Anthony's world is wonderful collection of object symbols, set design, and character development. His photographs are an intersection of Renaissance set and costume design, melted with a process that employs both antique photographic equipment and technology through post-production. His work is lush and painterly guided by deep hues of color, muted and apart in time. He creates an image that is akin to filmwork in its narrative, both cinematic and containing all the elements of a story left open-ended. His characters linger in a loosely draped studio space, a century gone by, waiting, wandering, lost in thought, casting challenge to unravel the mystery of the objects that accompany.

Sebastian Liste

Istanbul

16x20" edition of 7

24x35" edition of 7

Archival Pigment Print

Sebastian Liste's images are a deep sociological study through documentary fine art. His personal exploration into the culture of people who live on the outskirts of society is fueled by the need to understand the cultural changes that effect identity in our contemporary world. In his photographs he relates intimate stories of people who struggle and live in constant flux. They seek a sense of permanence, but lack the resource to obtain it. Conflict collides with the basic needs of security and family.

Liste’s photographs are a dense mixture of contrasts where black and white portray a deeper subtext of duality. They are dirty, yet beautiful. They are harsh, yet show a sense of community. They haunt, yet pull emotion from us, emotion buried deep within.