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Photographs taken in 1949 by LIFE photographer Gjon Mili show Picasso experimenting with light and long exposures, a technique that seemed to have only emerged recently. Apparently not.

Mili showed the artist some of his photographs of ice skaters with tiny lights affixed to their skates jumping in the dark—and Picasso’s mind began to race. The series of photographs that follows—Picasso’s light drawings—were made with a small flashlight in a dark room; the images vanished almost as soon as they were created.

Here are a couple of the photographs of the ice skaters that inspired Picasso.

I paint to express the energy – my stunning fascination with dance [...] Movement and dance are my greatest inspirations, and I somehow try to blend these dynamic forms of beauty with colors.

By Renata Brzozowska. Click the image to be taken to its respective gallery.

Photographer, currently living on a small island in the Bahamas, after moving 10 years ago from Moscow, where she was born. Photographs are from her series Alice in Wonderland and Underwater fairytale; both of which were shot underwater. Impressive stuff. I’m amazed at the clarity of some of the images, and the creative freedom the near weightlessness of being underwater enables. Here is her main website, which includes a portfolio, but be sure to check out the projects section for a larger variation.

As always, click on the photos to be taken to their respective pages. All links open in a new window.

I love this photo. Rediscovered it today sitting in a folder on my laptop. No idea who took it though.

A daily blog featuring the works of selected photographers from around the world. Includes some wonderful portraits and the odd tasteful nude thrown in for good measure. One can easily get lost for several hours in the archives. Click the screen cap to be taken to the page.

I’m always intrigued by this kind of photography, and by kind I mean nudes and beauty. It’s something I’ve recently been wanting to do myself. Perhaps to satisfy a voyeuristic curiosity, or a desire to photograph all the interesting looking people I keep coming across. Anyway, here are some of my favourites:

Irina Gymenyuk

Darren McDonald

Marc Bordons

Christian Pitsch

Gemma Booth

This photo is so full of cool it’s unreal.

When Dennis, an introvert bodybuilder, invites a local girl out on a date his mother is hurt and disappointed. Despite the pressure she puts on him to cancel the date, Dennis ventures into a night that he will never forget.

Massively into his stuff at the moment. Have had his book lying around my room for a while now and it’s only recently after picking it up again that I’ve begun to really appreciate his style. On his body of work, Theaters:

I am a habitual self-interlocutor. One evening while taking photographs at the American Museum of Natural History, I had a near-hallucinatory vision. My internal question-and-answer session leading up to this vision went something like this: “Suppose you shoot a whole movie in a single frame?” The answer: “You get a shining screen.” Immediately I began experimenting in order to realize this vision. One afternoon I walked into a cheap cinema in the East Village with a large format camera. As soon as the movie started, I fixed the shutter at a wide-open aperture. When the movie finished two hours later, I click the shutter closed. That evening I developed the film, and my vision exploded before my eyes.

Awesome.

Another series I love is Seascapes, which somewhat resemble blocks from a grey scale pallet, where focus is placed on the horizons in which they blend, intertwine and contrast.

Water and air. So very commonplace are these substances, they hardly attract attention—and yet they vouchsafe our very existence. The beginnings of life are shrouded in myth: Let there water and air. Living phenomena spontaneously generated from water and air in the presence of light, though that could just as easily suggest random coincidence as a Deity. Let’s just say that there happened to be a planet with water and air in our solar system, and moreover at precisely the right distance from the sun for the temperatures required to coax forth life. While hardly inconceivable that at least one such planet should exist in the vast reaches of universe, we search in vain for another similar example. Mystery of mysteries, water and air are right there before us in the sea. Every time I view the sea, I feel a calming sense of security, as if visiting my ancestral home; I embark on a voyage of seeing.

Hiroshi Sugimoto

Academically this term’s projects have come to an end. I didn’t score as highly as I had hoped to when I started, although over the last few weeks I had begun to anticipate this. I often get too involved in my research and as a result my attention was focused too much on the conceptual and less on the technical. I need to start finding a balance.  Also, a last minute decision meant that I displayed this piece as an installation and I didn’t have enough time to properly explore this aspect. As for the project, it still very much interests me and for the moment it will be shelved. Whether or not I continue it at some point remains to be seen. Below is the image I used along with my project appraisal.

Through an adaptation of defamiliarization, I will attempt to visually isolate examples of automation in pre-existing environments. Using the power of physical presence within a space as a metaphor for functionality and purpose, my project is a study on the configuration of social structure and interaction around these objects. The aim therein is to present these examples as singularities and question their relevance as participants in the mechanics of society. By means of renewed representation I want to encourage a conscious awareness of their existence and invite the viewer to re-establish a relationship with them.

In the above example, via an observation of optical stanzas, I sought to break down the visual sentence of the scene, much like the structure found in poetry in which only the essentials would be used to convey distance and alienation. The poem The Red Wheel Barrow, by W.C. Williams is a good example. For this reason, absolute attention was paid to its lighting, surroundings and colours  in order to achieve a sense of simplicity. With consideration given to the immediate, I aim to advance a heightened sensitivity to the things we interact with today.

In order for this to take place, the way in which the viewer encounters the work is essential. When displaying my current progress, I took influence from Anish Kapoor when considering the locationing of the piece. His use of object placement in relation to space is effective in creating mood and atmosphere; something that I had to take into account. The area I chose is secluded and darkened, and with the image being the only source of light, it is able to cast its gaze into this space. The result is the viewer stepping down and into an environment largely dominated by, and constructed through its presence. A life-size transparency of the image placed on a lightbox – à la Jeff Wall – and then mounted into the wall, is the predominate method in which this should be displayed and effectively viewed. Naturally, the area would need to be bigger and more accommodating for this.

Through a development in my on-going research, the focus of this project has shifted from an emphatic preoccupation with what and why, to a more broad and conversant how. By incorporating aspects, such as Freud’s study on the development of the Ego via association to – and interaction with – objects and surroundings into my frame of reference and applying them to today, I plan to take more informed steps.

Although this framework within which I have come to function has helped direct me, it has also narrowed the margin for error and visual deviation. The specificity of this approach forced the display of only one image. Ultimately, I plan to make this a series spread across a number of areas for viewers to engage with, and – supported by the availability of a comprehensive summary of my research – consider.