Today, Google Doodle commemorates the birthday of Zarina Hashmi, an influential Indian American artist who would have turned 86 today. The doodle, designed by guest illustrator Tara Anand from New York, pays homage to Hashmi’s artistic style by incorporating her signature geometric and minimalist abstract shapes.
Artist Luis Alberto Rodriguez already had a successful creative career before turning to photography – as a Juilliard-trained dancer, he performed worldwide for 15 years. The choreographic approach of a dancer remains as he’s evolved towards image-making, particularly present in his new photography book O, an exploration of power and an idea of purity, published with Loose Joints.
(Image credit: © Luis Alberto Rodriguez 2023 courtesy Loose Joints)
The dynamic nudes began from the personal turmoil experienced on a collective level during the pandemic ‘I think it’s fair to say it became a moment of reflection and contemplation for many of us. I began thinking of my own mortality, the state of denial I was in, and the unknown that always awaits us which at the time felt very scary. The initial conception of this new body of work stemmed from this aching and nagging feeling that had infiltrated my everyday life during that period.’
(Image credit: © Luis Alberto Rodriguez 2023 courtesy Loose Joints)
Rodriguez connects this emotion to French mystic thinker Simone Weil’s philosophies; through photographing his subject’s contorting physical expressions, the body becomes a distillation of the relationship between suffering and transcendence.
(Image credit: © Luis Alberto Rodriguez 2023 courtesy Loose Joints)
In these textural black-and-white images, diverse bodies stretch and fold far beyond our tight daily norms of behaviour. In the artist’s words, ‘O is sound, vibration, a gasp, an echo chamber, earth-shattering, a collective wail, a reset – our symphony.’
(Image credit: © Luis Alberto Rodriguez 2023 courtesy Loose Joints)
Another highly emotive dimension to the book is the inclusion of the Dominican-American artist’s heritage. Rodriguez’s mother’s intuitive skills of tasseography (divination through coffee cup reading) sit in spiritual dialogue with the nudes. The artist’s father is pictured within the series too, an unforgettable first Rodriguez says.
When asked about what’s next, he tells us: ‘Keeping my eyes open and following the sun.’
O by Luis Alberto Rodriguez is published by Loose Joints, £50, available at https://loosejoints.biz/
(Image credit: © Luis Alberto Rodriguez 2023 courtesy Loose Joints)
(Image credit: © Luis Alberto Rodriguez 2023 courtesy Loose Joints)
She was born on this day in 1937 in Aligarh
Google on Sunday paid tribute to Indian-American artist and printmaker Zarina Hashmi on her 86th birth anniversary with a doodle. The doodle which has been illustrated by New York-based guest artist Tara Anand, captures her use of minimalist abstract and geometric shapes to explore concepts of home, displacement, borders, and memory.
Notably, Hashmi is widely recognized as one of the most significant artists associated with the minimalist movement.
She was born on this day in 1937 in Aligarh. She and her four siblings lived an idyllic life until the partition of India in 1947. Zarina’s family was forced to flee to Karachi in the newly formed Pakistan.
Hashmi married a young foreign service diplomat and began traveling the world at 21. She spent time in Bangkok, Paris, and Japan, where she became immersed in printmaking and art movements like modernism and abstraction.
Hashmi moved to New York City in 1977 and became a strong advocate for women and artists of color. She soon joined the Heresies Collective, a feminist publication that explored the intersection of art, politics, and social justice.
She then went on to teach at the New York Feminist Art Institute, which provided equal education opportunities for female artists. In 1980, she co-curated an exhibition at A.I.R. Gallery called “Dialectics of Isolation: An Exhibition of Third World Women Artists of the United States.” This groundbreaking exhibition showcased work from diverse artists and provided a space for female artists of color.
A part of the Minimalism Art movement, Hashmi became internationally known for her striking woodcuts and intaglio prints that combine semi-abstract images of houses and cities where she had lived. Her work often contained inscriptions in her native Urdu, and geometric elements inspired by Islamic art.
People all over the world continue to contemplate Hashmi’s art in permanent collections at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, among other distinguished galleries.
She passed away in London as a result of complications from her Alzheimer’s disease on April 25, 2020.
BILOXI, Miss. (WLOX) – The Mad Potter of Biloxi is celebrating 166 years.
Saturday, the Ohr-O’Keefe Museum of Art held a birthday party for the late George Ohr. The event, which was free to the public, included fresh food and music along with arts and crafts.
Marketing director Molly Shea spoke about the importance of Ohr and celebrating the museum’s milestone.
“George Ohr was known as the ‘Mad Potter of Biloxi,’” Shea explained. “He would have been 166 years old. Basically, he was a crazy guy who lives in the 1800s who made beautiful pottery that has changed the world, and he came from little Biloxi. Today, we are celebrating him and all sorts of artists in the area by having vendors here and activities and ceramic studio, just to kind of appreciate Mississippi artists today.”
Ohr was an active potter on the coast from 1879 to around 1910.
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FAIRBANKS, Alaska (KTUU) – At the World Eskimo Indian Olympics there is a group of artists gathered on the elevated track above the arena, surrounding the competition in creative energy.
Among the artists is Vince Gregory, a carver who says he enjoys the WEIO event as it gives him a chance to reconnect with relatives, friends, and other artists — and is a chance for him to find new inspirations and trade works with other artists.
“It’s like just one big village family reunion, and it’s really cool. It’s really heartwarming. It makes my heart sing and dance,” Gregory said.
Gregory — who is of Yup’ik and Norwegian descent — uses the name Carving Fox and blends his knowledge of Alaska Native ivory carvings with his Nordic heritage.
“Like on my bracelet you see, since I’m part Scandinavian, you see in the Norse runes the Carving Fox,” Gregory said.
Sometimes Gregory has to get a bit inventive with the way he does his work when creating pieces with certain disconnects.
“As far as I understand, in the Norse language, there’s no word for carving, so the closest equivalent I could find was ‘fox artist’. And there’s no letter V in the runes either so I had to kind of switch it up a little and make it so it’s more accurate,” Gregory said
A self-taught artist, Gregory says that he has been an ivory carver since 2012. He currently works in a shop in Downtown Anchorage called the Alaska Art Alliance.
In addition to the bracelet with inlaid Nordic runes, Gregory displayed a watch featuring a band of ivory and runes displaying the time. But the centerpiece of his display of works was a chessboard made completely out of ivory and baleen, complete with handcrafted figures.
“The end result, I think, turned out pretty beautifully. And you know, with that in mind, the longest I’ve spent on any of the chess pieces was about six and a half hours. And with each piece, I only had one shot to do it,” Gregory said.
While he isn’t carving, Gregory works as a preschool teacher. He says that he worked many sleepless nights creating each of the pieces before it came to completion.
“I only got one shot at this and I was working seven days a week,” Gregory said. “I was like, I just want to finish this so I can go home and sleep! But once you set your mind to anything, there’s nothing stopping you.”
For his next project, Gregory plans to tackle the challenge of creating frames for sunglasses out of ivory and baleen.
“That’s my goal — do something no one’s ever done before. And to date I’ve seen plenty of people make goggles, like the snow goggles, but I’ve never seen someone make, you know, actual sunglasses,” Gregory said.
Gregory’s advice to aspiring artists is that art is supposed to be messy — and fun. He’s now created over 1,000 ivory rings, but says that it took that practice to start creating something new.
“You never know, you might make magic happen,” Gregory said.
Copyright 2023 KTUU. All rights reserved.
What lured you into photography? Was it a specific genre? Was it a person? Whatever the case, I want to lay out the benefits of being as open and experimental as possible when you are new to the craft.
It feels as if every photographer has their own unique path that led them to their first camera and the all-consuming passion that is photography. I’d always had a vague interest in taking pictures, and I used to commandeer the family disposable cameras until chunky, digital point-and-shoots were occupying a drawer in every house, then I used those. Nevertheless, nobody ever pushed me to try photography properly, and I never sought the knowledge or training.
Then — and this is the third time I’ve written this on Fstoppers, so I’m going to skip large parts — I found a subsection of the car forum I was on every day that was dedicated to photography. It was stuffed full of incredible photographers, from automotive (obviously) to internationally awarded landscape photographers. Quite unexpectedly, what caught my attention was a thread on macro photography. There were two different photographers who had Canon TS-E macro lenses that were paired with Canon MT-26EX-RT Macro Twin Lites, which if you’re unfamiliar with macro, was (and is) the Rolls Royce pairing for insect-bothering.
My obsession grew, and eventually, I found the cheapest path into macro photography I could: a (heavily) used Canon 350D, the 18-55mm kit lens it originally came with, and a macro filter from eBay. I only have one surviving shot from that setup, and apart from the image quality, I still rather like it:
My initial interest in becoming a photographer was simply to take pictures of insects. Nevertheless, when you find yourself with some new technology (to you) in your hands, it’s hard not to grow curious. Before long, I was taking awful portraits of my girlfriend, horribly exposed landscapes, and even product shots of watches I owned. I wanted to try anything and everything, from genres to techniques, and I did. In fact, I can honestly say there wasn’t much I didn’t try my hand at in the first few years. Some of those, such as portraits and product shots of watches, became so important to me that they would end up steering me away from my intended life in academia and to photography as a career instead. Had I not been experimental, I would have missed out on many things, but more than that, I would have been worse off as a photographer too. So, here are five ways experimenting as a new photographer is valuable.
I believed my passion to be taking macro photographs of insects, as bizarre as that is. It was what got me through the door, and I still love it over a decade later. You might argue that I actually just loved macro photography, but there was a passion for another genre that, when I started photography, I had no interest in: portraiture.
I went from being uninterested in portraiture, to starting a website dedicated to it (that eventually led me to write for Fstoppers), and running a Pinterest board about it that peaked at 100,000 views per month. Since then, portraiture has been a central part of my photography as a passion and as a business. Had I not tried other genres, I would have missed out on finding a part of the craft I truly love.
A wildly underappreciated benefit of trying different genres as a beginner is the amount of overlap in skill sets between genres. That is, macro photography can teach you a lot about strobe lighting that can be transferred to portraiture, for example. Or, motorsport photography can teach you a lot about shutter speeds and settings you would use for wildlife photography. Or, light painting can teach you a lot about long exposures for astrophotography, and so on.
You would be hard-pushed to find a genre that doesn’t overlap with any other genres, and so while you learn one, you may be improving several others.
There is more conceptual benefit to experimenting with lots of genres as a new photographer: expanding your perspectives. What I mean by that is when you learn different genres, some of the foundations start to influence how you see other genres too. For example, if you were initially drawn to taking landscapes, perhaps your eye for wildlife photography will be informed by your experience and interest in the former. Where some wildlife photographers might whip out the 600mm howitzer to shoot a moose completely separated from its background, you opt to incorporate it into the surroundings. There are many times when some knowledge from one area can be applied to another for interesting results.
This section is really the convergence of the two before it, as the transferrable skills and expanded perspectives make for a far more versatile photographer. Now, this can be taken in two ways: either, you can perform high-quality photography of lots of different genres and perhaps secure work for wildly differing assignments. Or — and this is how I believe it is the most valuable — you are able to drill down in your own genre and work in ways that others wouldn’t think to. In professional photography in particular, you are regularly thrown into difficult and unexpected situations, and you need to be able to think on your feet to resolve it. I credit most of my versatility to my curiosity as a photographer.
If you are lucky enough to have seen the enjoyment in photography, take the time to explore its profound depth. As someone who loves the craft, I have put hundreds of hours into many genres I do not pursue professionally just for the enjoyment of it. Thankfully, in turn, I grow as a photographer in unexpected ways from doing so, and this was particularly true when I first started. From praying mantises to portraits, and photojournalism to Polaroid, I’ve explored the craft, turning it on all sides, and it’s a valuable task.
To the photographers who haven’t just started, how often do you stray from your “main” genre? Have you seen the benefits of doing so? Share your experiences in the comments below.
Symmetry has long been one of the most powerful tools to provide visual interest in an image, and there are many ways to leverage it in your work to create compelling shots. This fantastic video tutorial will show you some of the different types of symmetry in landscape photography and how you can use them in your own work.
Coming to you from Mike Smith, this awesome video tutorial discusses the application of symmetry in landscape photography. To be clear, you do not have to prioritize symmetry; rather, it is about keeping it front of mind and making purposeful decisions whether to use it or not. A symmetrical image inherently feels balanced, and that can create a sense of peace and calm, which can be used to great effect. On the other hand, a carefully designed asymmetrical image can impart a sense of tension or unease, which can help to add a sense of drama to a shot, which can be useful for something like an approaching storm or imposing mountain. Check out the video above for the full rundown from Smith.
And if you really want to dive into landscape photography, check out “Photographing The World 1: Landscape Photography and Post-Processing with Elia Locardi.”
