Singulart is an online art gallery featuring work from artists worldwide across a diverse range of mediums, including photography. With a team of art advisors available 24/7, customers can find the perfect artwork and have it delivered straight to their homes.

Full disclosure: This article was brought to you by Singulart

There are many ways to browse Singulart to find the right piece. Users can filter by medium, price, theme, style, technique, country of origin, display orientation, size, and color. In addition to types of art like paintings, drawings, and photographs, Singulart also sells more unusual mediums, like sculptures and textiles.

For example, when the photography medium is selected, the theme dropdown menu changes to show different genres, like fine art, landscape, portrait, urban, nature, conceptual, and more. Customers can also pick from various “photography movements,” including color, black and white, digital, analog, sepia, panoramic, and more. In a similar spirit, “photography techniques” includes analog, digital, and hybrid options.

Finding the Perfect Photo

Cutting Through the Noise

There are so many benefits of photo-sharing platforms such as Flickr and Instagram. They enable people to share their favorite photos with friends, family, and strangers.

However, platforms like these are nearly impossible to use for anyone trying to find the perfect photo to purchase. Since it is so easy to share images, there is just a staggering amount of photography to wade through.

Even though many photographers create stunning work, some art buyers are seeking the perfect piece for their space and hoping to buy from a renowned artist. Singulart explains a bit about each artist on its platform, including their achievements within the art world. A personal connection to a piece is critical, and Singulart helps make this possible, even online.

Singulart cuts through all the noise by delivering a curated art gallery featuring professional work. Due to the filters mentioned above, it is an extremely straightforward way to buy art online.

Using Singulart to Find Dynamic Nature Photographs

I love nature photography. Like many others, I enjoy doing it for myself. However, I also love seeing how other artists see the world around them and translate the feeling and spirit of nature into a two-dimensional space.

It is easy enough to start the search for the perfect nature photo on Singulart using Photography and Nature filters. Photos are shown in a scrolling gallery separated by individual artists.

There are a lot of artists to scroll through — nearly 300. While a highly curated platform means there may be fewer pieces than a website where everyone can sell their work, buyers can feel more confident in every item available and more easily find what they want.

Back to the search for dynamic nature photos. I very quickly found an exciting artist, Ivona Zubakova. Visiting the Slovakian artist’s page on Singulart shows her portfolio of available work and her credentials. She is nationally known within Slovakia, is an established artist, and has had solo exhibitions. From her page, people can also follow her to stay updated with anything she adds to Singulart.

While Zubakova is talented across multiple disciplines and does some wonderful portraiture work, I want a nature image. This is a great option.

Once a person finds a piece they are interested in, there are a few options for trying to acquire it. The photo, printed on 33x24in paper, is listed for $2,060. While that is not unreasonable, it may be outside the budget of a prospective purchaser. In that case, instead of clicking “Acquire this Artwork,” they can select the “Make an Offer” option to negotiate with the artist.

The final price is all-inclusive, including 7-10 day professional delivery. Singulart also offers free 14-day returns, framing options, and original work ships with a certificate of authenticity.

Surreal and Serene Nature

While Zubakova’s “Iceland” print is an excellent fit for many different walls in a home, I want something a bit more surreal as a conversation piece. I still want a photo that is related to nature, but I want something a bit more unusual and very different from anything I would personally create. Being able to experience familiar emotions in a very different way is one of the best parts of viewing the art that others create.

Chinese multidisciplinary artist Kaixuan Feng has a diverse portfolio of photographs, paintings, and textiles. Her image, “Don de Soi ( N^o XXVII )” is an excellent example of precisely the type of photograph I love to look at but would be wholly unable to capture myself. It represents a way of seeing the world that is elusive and beautiful.

“Don de Soi,” which translates to self-sacrifice, is a series of photographs by Feng that each place a woman within a natural scene.

“Historic and deserted places, she finds there. Through her photographs in which she stages herself, she magnifies these ruins settings and brings them back to life. Kaixuan Feng offers doubly stolen moments. Each photograph becomes a scene of reincarnation. Thanks to digital technology, the artist encrusts details which are so many narrative elements. The photographs are composed like dives into lost time. Telling history and history, this well-established distinction between the path of the individual and the collective, such is the ambition of Kaixuan Feng,” explains a translated description on the photo’s page.

It is a framed print and the second of a five-edition run. Feng is a rising star in the art world and has been internationally shown. She was recently featured in Singulart’s guide, “Top 10 Photographers to Watch.”

Finding the Perfect Color

Another common scenario for people searching for the perfect art to hang on their walls is trying to find something that fits the mood or color of a room. While white or gray walls may be conducive to just about any sort of photo, colored walls, such as perhaps a slate blue, may not work well with just any color.

Taking that example further, I love cool/warm contrasts. With a blue backdrop, I want a photograph that heavily emphasizes orange. Better yet, I want to purchase something created using analog camera technology.

Selecting “analog” as the photography technique and picking red, dark orange, and light orange colors — you can choose as many colors as you want — it is time to find the perfect photo.

I am glad I picked red and orange, because Aurore Millet’s image, “Sublime 2, 2010,” is the absolute perfect photo to hang on a slate blue wall.

The Value of an Online Art Gallery

What makes Singulart special in the online art space is the platform’s impressive focus on photography. Many art galleries emphasize more traditional artistic mediums such as painting and drawing. It is really great to see a gallery that celebrates the beauty of photography and showcases the work that talented photographers and multi-disciplinary artists create.

Further, Singulart enables people to find prints from photographers that they might never see otherwise. While it is great to be able to meet an artist in person at an exhibition or local gallery, that limits people to a relatively small group of artists. There are few places to see art in person for people like me who live in a very rural area.

Of course, seeing a print on a website is different from seeing it in person, which is why Singulart’s return policy is so important. Sometimes even beautiful work is not the right fit for someone once they receive the piece.

Singulart works very hard to cultivate an inclusive space. Just about half of its artists and designers are women, for example. Some disciplines, including photography, have often been male-dominated, so it is brilliant to not only see photographers that may otherwise go unnoticed outside their home nations but also to see more women artists showcased.

While application reviews are currently on hold due to an overwhelming number of artist applications, photographers are encouraged to apply to join Singulart.

There is so much incredible photography out there, and Singulart is a great place to view and purchase prints from talented artists.

Full disclosure: This article was brought to you by Singulart

Image credits: High-resolution images courtesy of Singulart, artists credited in the captions.

Jamaican-born photographer Ruddy Roye has only caught one fish in his life, but he understands the patience needed to catch one.

A few years ago, Roye moved to Northeast Ohio from Brooklyn, and he recently discovered the allure of Cleveland fishing along the Lake Erie shore at the East 55^th Street Marina.

He’s fishing not for walleye, but for images with his camera.

“Actually, whenever I talk to [the fishermen], I say to them that, ‘Me getting an image equates to you getting one fish,’” Roye said. “I’m waiting for that one fish to come into my frame.”

From talking with people who are fishing, Roye said he realized that many see the popular fishing spot as a sanctuary from the city’s gun violence.

“The more I delved into each particular fisherman’s story, the more I got it’s a place of peace away from Kinsman and East Cleveland,” Roye said.

For more than 20 years, Roye was based out of New York City as a freelance photojournalist working for publications like Time, The New York Times, The New Yorker, ESPN, Ebony and Essence magazines.

He moved his family to Cleveland Heights after a successful residency with the Cleveland Print Room and the Cleveland Public Library in 2019.

“I remember coming to Cleveland every other weekend, driving around. Then I realized that there were things here that I could photograph,” he said. “Of all the states that I have worked in, lived in, Cleveland afforded me a space that made me feel like I was a photographer again.”

Now Roye’s focus is the men and women who fish for walleye and perch at the marina.

“It takes time to make somebody feel comfortable with you being in their relaxation space. In their space of, ‘I want to get into my Zen right now. I don’t really need a camera shoved into my face,’” he said.

Roye said he’s a people person which helps him talk to those he photographs before he picks up his camera.

“I always try to connect on a human level,” he said. “I’m trying to tell a story that also exists in me. It’s very rare that I go outside of me to tell a story. I usually connect with something that I’ve already gone through, I’ve seen, and I try to make that connection.”

His art is a self-help tool of sorts.

“I’ve always felt like photography was the thing that I used to grow to be a better person, to be a better man, to be a better seer, to be a better philosopher, to be a better father,” he said. “Photography is something I hold dearly, and I do appreciate the way it has allowed me to be a better person.”

Roye plans to continue with this series and expand upon it for a future exhibition.

We do not know if Donald Trump’s hairdresser and makeup artists blow-dried and primped the former US president on his flight from Mar-a-Lago to Atlanta, but it seems likely. By the time he surrendered at Fulton, like that other fading star Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard, Trump was ready for his close-up. The celebrity mugshot, after all, is more about performance art and political statement than mere police documentation.

Trump makes the best of what he has. Or his people do. Is it possible they brokered a deal with the sheriff to change the wattage of the overhead lightbulb to make it less harsh? Boldly leaning forward so we can study his thatch, and see where toupee ends and pate begins, it’s a performance that perhaps, like his hairpiece, is poised to become unstuck. The red-rimmed eyes suggest tiredness. Perhaps – let me dream – he’s been crying over his comeuppance. And the sternness of the expression seems almost self-satirising.

Trump’s gaze seems risible precisely because he is trying so hard to look serious. In this, he’s channelling the spirits of long-dead virtuosos of the mugshot. In Stalin’s, from 1911, we see the tousle-haired revolutionary arrested by Tsarist police for fomenting unrest. His stare – like Trump’s but more calm and scornful – suggests the establishment has no authority over him. In Martin Luther King’s 1956 mugshot, taken after his arrest during bus boycotts, he stares back at the cops who booked him, and by extension white America, with a hint of scorn and rage but with dignity nonetheless.

Trump could do with a little of that dignity in his self-righteous fury. Yet King’s dignity is beyond Trump – and nor can the ex-president look quite as scary as Stalin. At least he was able to avoid the rookie mistakes made by, for example, wild-haired James Brown caught unawares. Trump, for all his shortcomings, isn’t naive enough to let himself be captured for posterity like that.

Instead, he quotes from mugshot history. Yet, for all that it is a performance, Trump is no Cindy Sherman role-playing magnificently for the camera. The problem is he just isn’t very good at all this. Glaring crossly beneath arched eyebrows as if staring down a flunky who’s served up a cold burger, Trump looks as out of his element as the constipated Duke of Wellington in the portrait by Goya. He may be aiming for the moral uprightness of Lorenzo Lotto’s Portrait of a Woman Inspired by Lucretia, yet he looks as pompous and silly as Stephen Fry playing General Melchett in Blackadder.

As a work of art, it’s not clear what the photographer’s role here is, but it’s hard not to think whoever pushed the button intended to make the sitter look ridiculous. If so, well done: this anonymous artist has made the once most powerful man in the world look like a foolish old duffer with anger issues rather than a serious presidential contender.

The sitter’s role here is to wrest control of his image from the plod snapper, but Trump hasn’t got the chutzpah. When Jane Fonda was busted on trumped-up charges of drug smuggling in 1970, she appeared holding a clenched fist aloft, glaring. Trump, unable to master the simplicity and power of that pose, looks what Fonda doesn’t – laughable.

Clearly Trump thinks the image will help the brand and, by extension, his bid to become president once more. The pose Trump has struck is, to be fair, honoured by history, which teaches: “Don’t be a mug and smile.” Go for passport photo solemnity, but with added gravitas. These truths were recognised by French criminologist Alphonse Bertillon when he invented, or rather standardised, the mugshot in 1888. But they were ignored by some of the worst criminals in history.

The American mafia gangster John Gotti grins foolishly for his 1990 mugshot, while drug lord Pablo Escobar leers. The expression on Al Capone’s face says: “How could a chubby-baby-faced poppet like me be guilty of anything, least of all tax fraud?” It also says that he ain’t intimidated by no cop. Paris Hilton smirks imperiously, after being arrested in Vegas in 2010, as if to say to whomever is taking her picture: “Really?”( or perhaps: “Rilly?)

The only smiling mugshot that does its subject any favours is the one of Bill Gates in Albuquerque in 1977, for driving without a license and running a stop sign. His geeky grin rhymes with his terrible glasses – all fitting emblems for the nerd who, a year later, moved his startup company Microsoft to Seattle and conquered the world.

Two of Trump’s 18 co-defendants didn’t get the no-smiles memo. His former lawyer Jenna Ellis grins broadly, as does David Shafer, former chairman of the Georgia Republican party. At best, their poses suggest they’re playing innocent, but it comes across in both cases as witlessness in the face of quite serious indictments. To be fair, neither seem quite so criminal as another of the co-accused, Rudy Giuliani, who looks as if he’s just come off set as the Joker after shooting a scene in which Batman finally sees him off.

The trick of the mugshot, which Trump realises, is to look as though you’re 100% not guilty. Indeed, the mugshot must be understood not as shaming moment but as opportunity for promotion. Mick Jagger and Frank Sinatra are outliers in this respect. Arrested for amphetamine possession in 1967, Jagger more or less wittingly used the mugshot as an opportunity to present his incredibly fetching pouting lips, hollowed cheeks and general aura of bad-boy sexiness, all commensurate with his band’s image.

Yet at the same time, Jagger’s mugshot also served as a depiction of youthful vulnerability. Indeed, busted on dodgy drugs charges, Jagger managed to gain the support of William Rees-Mogg, who wrote a leader for the Times under the headline “Who Breaks a Butterfly on a Wheel?”, indicting those who were indicting and saying they were in the wrong, not lovely Mick. And so it proved: Mick got the charges overturned on appeal.

Similarly, when Sinatra was busted in 1938 for “seduction”, his mugshot showed a transgressive bad boy with eyes you could write poetry about. At least until you read the FBI report, which asserts that “under the promise of marriage” Sinatra “did then and there have sexual intercourse with the said complainant, who was then and there a single female of good repute”.

No celebrity mugshot, though, can match in adorableness those taken by Holly Hunter, playing a cop in the 1987 film Raising Arizona, shooting recidivist Nicolas Cage. “Turn to the right!” shouts Hunter as she takes his mugshot. “You’re a flower, you are,” replies Cage, already in love. “Just a little desert flower.” That, to be sure, is not really in the Trump playbook.