About

Posts by :

Emerging artists from the Malta Biennale

Emerging artists from the Malta Biennale
image

These are the artists you need to know from the recent Malta Biennale

2April 2024

Biennales hold up a mirror to ourselves. And while the forthcoming Venice Biennale currently faces criticism from the artist community for those it chooses to platform, Malta’s inaugural Art Biennale – running from now until the end of May – leaves the visitor in no doubt as to its dedication to exploring the political issues of the moment. What works so well, in this Biennale that brings together an international coterie of artists with local Maltese talents, is that many of those artists are responding particularly, and radically, to the tiny country of Malta’s geopolitically storied, but difficult-to-negotiate, past.  

Taking place across many of Malta’s culturally-historic locations and curated by independent curator Sofia Baldi Pighi, the Art Biennale unfolds in a series of site-specific installations, outdoor performances, and displays that combine to give the impression of interventions into history. Under the overarching theme white sea olive groves, the Biennale is split into four themes: one explores the vital importance of the sea to the island and its surrounding Mediterranean countries, and combatting isolationist policies in the middle of the migrant crisis; another looks at the history of piracy – and slavery – to the island nation; another configures Malta and its past under a lens of decolonisation; and the final thematic chapter explores womanhood and the idea of the matri-archive, in a Maltese context which has a long history of misogyny. For the latter, in patriarchal, weaponry-filled venues like the Grandmaster’s Palace, Maltese ceramicist Nina Gerada’s miniature army of feminine forms counter the masculine environment of the halls of power. Elsewhere, a large, site-specific canvas by Teresa Antignani, a surrealist re-rendering of Florentino’s Deposition of the Cross (1521), clearly shows the Maltese capital of Valetta and is the artist’s tribute to the outsized number of accidents on the construction sites of Malta’s hyper-accelerated developments, including the fatal one of young worker Jean Paul Sofia in late 2022 – in her re-interpretation, Jesus is a woman.

Other highlights across Malta and the smaller, less-often spotlighted, island of Gozo, include a film by Rosa Barba in the spooky underground caves of Valletta; a multi-media installation re-compassing the life of freed 18th century slave Cara Mehmed by American artist Joseph Cochran II in the light-filled Birgu Armoury; and a dystopian installation in the darkened storehouse of the Conspicua docks by Italian-Ethiopian-Eritrean transdisciplinary artist Jermay Michael Gabriel, accompanied by a performance which called for a free Palestine. In the similarly atmospheric plane of the mystical archaeological site of Ggantija, Ibrahim Mahama crafted a plateau of concrete sculptures which combined tombstone materials from Amsterdam and Mahama’s hometown of Tamale in Ghana – stones that, like the ancient ruins of the site, the artist refers to as a “kind of teleportation device.” Perhaps this Malta Biennale begins to articulate a new kind of structure for such international art events: one that, even among glorious sunshine and impressive sights, doesn’t ignore the power structures that have held such institutions and buildings up in the first place. 

maltabiennale.art is brought to you by Heritage Malta’s MUŻA, the National Museum of Art with the full cooperation and participation of a number of other organisations. It runs until May 31, 2024.

Rahim Fortune’s New Book Is a Poetic Portrait of Black Southern Identity

Rahim Fortune’s New Book Is a Poetic Portrait of Black Southern Identity

Published by Loose Joints, Rahim Fortune’s latest photography book Hardtack is a thoughtful meditation of ideas around keeping one’s culture and the work of being an American

April 02, 2024

Photographer Rahim Fortune first encountered the word ‘hardtack’ while spending time with descendants of the Buffalo Soldiers in Austin, Texas. A simple mixture of flour, water and salt, hardtack functioned as a vital source of fuel for soldiers during the American Civil War. For Fortune, the word took on a deeper resonance, symbolising the durability and tenacity of the South’s complex traditions and the people who preserve them. 

Hardtack would also become the title of Fortune’s latest monograph. Published by Loose Joints, who collaborated with Fortune on his second book, I can’t stand to see you cry (2021), Hardtack spans ten years of photographic work. About a third of the images were taken on assignment, while the rest are from Fortune’s personal practice. 

In the South, history never leaves you; it is as ever-present and constant as the weather. A native Texan, Fortune knows this intimacy well. In his images history is never sequestered to the past; it lives and breathes in the hands and faces of the women, men, and children he photographs. It’s in the folded and sharply manicured hands of a grandmother in her Sunday best, the artful curve of the cowboy’s hat and a buckle that reads, proudly, “ASGCA Champion 2002.” 

While studying sociology at CUNY, Fortune worked as an assistant to two formidable photographers: Magnum photojournalist Eli Reed – who showed Fortune how photography could be used to “speak on social or personal issues”– and Wayne Lawrence, a member of the legendary Kamoinge Workshop, a collective of Black photographers established in Harlem in 1963. Fortune also cites Houston photographer Earlie Hudnall Jr, the civil rights-era photographer Consuelo Kanaga, and the Farm Security Administration generation of photographers, such as Dorothea Lange and Russell Lee, as key influences. 

All of the images in Hardtack are in black and white and most were shot on film. Fortune shoots in 6 x 7 format, a choice that speaks directly to the photographic lineage he sees himself as being part of. He is deeply aware and critical of how photography has been used historically to construct limited narratives about the American South, particularly its Black residents. “I’m trying to use this book as a way of observing the historical relationship between Black Americans and photography,” he says. “Particularly the use of the silver gelatin print, both from our own community photographers, but also from [the] outside.” Since its inception, the photograph has been used as a tool of self-fashioning, for individuals and societies alike. “It’s no mistake that Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth were the most photographed people of their time,” Fortune adds. “I think that Black Americans on the heels of slavery understood very quickly the power of photography and the power of making one’s own self-image. I’m very interested in that as its own kind of canon.”

Generation after generation of African American image-makers – from James Van Der Zee to Gordon Parks – have carried on this tradition, and Fortune, thankfully, is one of them. He has that rare combination of the artist and the historian. In one photograph, AME Church Interior, Tucker, Texas, 2022, layers of images speak to a legacy of African American community and autonomy. There’s an undeniable lyricism and grace found in Hardtack, as in Praise Dancers, Edna, Texas, 2020, in which a group of worshippers – their arms spread towards the heavens – look as if they’re about to take flight. 

In Hardtack, self-presentation is a form of self-preservation, with clothes pressed, belts cinched, and edges curled. Or, in the case of Queen of Hearts, Atlanta, Georgia, 2019, hair sculpted magically – and majestically – into the shape of a heart. “I became really interested in this idea of self-creation through clothing,” says Fortune. “Especially within the wake of this country’s current political moment. What does it mean for a Black Southern identity?”

History marks the land; and work, too. In many ways, Hardtack is about work, the back-breaking kind: the work of raising a family and of keeping one’s culture. It is the work of being an American; the work of somehow, despite the odds, keeping hope alive. 

Hardtack by Rahim Fortune is published by Loose Joints, and is out now. 

Wearing only a pair of white shoes, this photographer spent years posing nude in New York City

Wearing only a pair of white shoes, this photographer spent years posing nude in New York City


CNN
 — 

For over a decade, the photographer Nona Faustine shot self-portraits in and around New York City, in many instances posing fully nude apart from a pair of crisp white pumps. Faustine’s captivating photographs immerse viewers into often-forgotten histories; the series, “White Shoes,” highlights the city’s historic role in the transatlantic slave trade, as well as broader narratives about the perception of Black bodies in the arts.

It is currently on display at the Brooklyn Museum in an exhibition that marks the first solo show for Faustine, a Brooklyn native. Its photographs take viewers to locations across all five of New York City’s boroughs built — in many cases, literally — on enslaved people’s legacies.

Faustine was introduced to photography by her father and uncle, who brought her first camera when she was four years old, and took her first photography classes in elementary school. She began the body of work from which “White Shoes” is drawn during graduate studies at the International Center of Photography (ICP) program at Bard College.

All my knowledge, everything I know about photography, and everything I know about history and life is part of the work. My heart and soul is in that series,” Faustine told CNN in an email. “It is fine art, conceptual and documentary photography combined.”

A golden cape Faustine wears in photos serves to represent the feminine divine, an energy that promotes positive change in the world and serves to protect sites that carry the legacies of the enslaved. Pictured above, Faustine poses at the African Burial Ground National Monument in downtown Manhattan.

For centuries, New York City played a significant role in the enslavement of Black people. As early as the 1620s, Dutch settlers utilized enslaved labor to help build out the colony of New Amsterdam which became the city.

“Up to the Civil War, Wall Street, New York City financed the slavocracy in the south through its financing of the rising market for cotton,” explained Jacob Morris, the head of the Harlem Historical Society and architect of legislation to create a freedom trail in the city. “There was a lot of support for the system and the South, because of our making a lot of money off of (slavery) through the banking system.”

Enslaved people were sold at slave markets in New York City on Wall Street in Lower Manhattan starting for over 50 years in the 18th century. By 1730, forty-two percent of White households in the city enslaved Black people — the second-largest percentage of household slave ownership, after Charleston, South Carolina, in the United States.

Baring all, and bearing witness

Throughout “White Shoes,” Faustine wears a pair of white kitten heels — a symbol, she explained, of the pressures faced by Black women and girls to conform to Western beauty standards and the White patriarchy.

The series’ opener, a 2012 image titled “Venus of Vlacke Bos” (Vlacke Bos is Dutch for Flatbush), serves to highlight the impact of slavery in and on Brooklyn — in 1790, it was recorded that the borough had the highest number of enslaved people north of the Mason-Dixon line. In the photograph, Faustine is nude save for her heels and a pair of gloves, sitting on blue silk fabric in a studio with hands folded over her knee in a stylized, delicate pose. A tiara is balanced on her head, representing Western royalty and the dehumanizing ways White people treated enslaved Black women.

Faustine is nude throughout the early images in “White Shoes,” a conscious decision made, the photographer explained, to commemorate her ancestors, Black women today — and herself. In particular, she cited taking inspiration from daguerreotypes of Saartjie “Sarah” Baartman, a South African woman trafficked to Europe and exhibited as part of a human zoo in the early 19th-century.

“If you look back into the history of the Black body in art and photography, it’s highly problematic,” Faustine told CNN in an interview during a press preview for her exhibit. “I have never walked into a museum, until recently, and seen myself depicted on the walls the way I want to be represented.”

“This is a Black female body who’s given birth, who survived, who is a free woman and who is celebrating her freedom, her body and her people the way she wants to be celebrated and depicted,” she continued of her work. “But in the beginning it’s also giving acknowledgment to the ways we were brought here in chains. I am not playing a slave. I’m myself, Nona Faustine, in all of these images.”

The Black body, as a body of work

The Brooklyn Museum’s senior curator Catherine Morris, who organized the show alongside curatorial assistant Carla Forbes, noted the potent double entendre apparent in Faustine’s photographs. Take Faustine’s 2013 picture “From Her Body Came Their Greatest Wealth,” an image in which she stands alone on an apple box in the middle of Wall Street, nude with chains on her arms. Faustine’s stance exudes the confidence of a public orator, Morris explained, while monumentalizing the place where White people sold her ancestors. The photograph illustrates Faustine’s assurance in herself while highlighting the historical tragedies experienced by Black people at the very place she is reclaiming.

As the audience moves through the exhibition and Faustine’s body of work, she becomes more clothed — a symbolic depiction of the movement of time and progression by which Black people gained freedom.

“It is about time travel,” Faustine explained. “When you see me at the end, I’m fully closed and back in the present myself. So I have journeyed through the past and the presents symbolically.”

That journey is gradual: At first, Faustine is seen donning a black and a blue scarf on her head, but no other clothes to cover the rest of her body, in photos taken outside Brooklyn Borough Hall and a playground in Chinatown. In subsequent shoots across Brooklyn and Manhattan, Faustine — still topless, but now wearing a white skirt — holds props like a gun and a sign that quotes Sojourner Truth’s famous speech “Ain’t I A Woman,” honoring those who fought for the abolition of slavery.

And as the exhibition and her photographic journey comes to a close, Faustine wears a white dress and a straw hat, posing with her back facing the audience, in images taken at Shelter Island — where a plantation enslaved Africans and Native Americans from 1651 until 1820 — and Staten Island. In the very final image, she is seen wearing her everyday clothing.

Throughout “White Shoes,” Faustine implores her audience to confront these uncomfortable truths embedded in the very fabric of New York City while honoring the legacies of Black people who were woven into it.

“I want people to understand how far we’ve come. I want them to take pride… I want them to look into the story and know their history,” she said. “This is a history that is being censored and condemned all across the country now.”

Sandwich Student Wins Two Photography Awards

Sandwich Student Wins Two Photography Awards

Sandwich Middle High School 8th grader Lyla Vasquez took home two awards in the second annual Young Photographers’ Contest at the Hyannis Public Library.

In the “People” category, Lyla captured first-place honors for her photograph, “Pierson. She also won honorable mention in the “Things” category for “Wolves.” First-place awards included a cash prize, and all entries can be viewed online at www.hyannislibrary.org.

How the Late Italian Painter Salvo Went From Also-Ran to Market Star

How the Late Italian Painter Salvo Went From Also-Ran to Market Star

Two decades ago, when the mononymous Italian artist Salvo was in his mid-50s, the market for his alluring and vividly colored landscapes was decidedly mediocre, with his average price at auction hovering in the high four figures. Fast forward to today, and his work is in high demand, even at a moment when the contemporary field is experiencing a downturn.

Salvo’s works have been hanging in booths at leading art fairs of late and selling well on the auction block. Last year, his auction record was set at Christie’s Hong Kong, when his large 1994 canvas Il Mattino (The Morning) sold for more than $1.1 million (HK$8.7 million), some 210 percent above its presale estimate.

Even “ten years ago, Salvo was practically unknown outside of Italy,” Manuel Gerber, a partner at the Zurich-based art advisory Gerber & Stauffer Fine Arts, said. “There was only a very small number of dedicated international collectors, many of them in Switzerland. When we showed his work to clients or friends at the time, we’d get blank or puzzled looks back at best, appalled incomprehension at worst.”

Salvo, Il Mattino (The Morning) (1994). Courtesy of Christie's.

Salvo, Il Mattino (The Morning), 1994. Courtesy of Christie’s.

Things began to change after Salvo’s death in 2015, at the age of 68, Gerber noted. The following year, his estate established the Archivio Salvo, a nonprofit to preserve and promote his legacy, and it helped build a solid lineup of institutional and gallery shows in subsequent years. Meanwhile, ultra-contemporary stars like Nicolas Party and Jonathan Monk have incorporated Salvo’s style into their oeuvre. (A 2021 exhibition at the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo in Rome showed works by Salvo side by side with those by Party and Monk.)

“About a year ago, all of these slow-burn factors were fanned into a wildfire by a much younger crowd, very few of whom were potential buyers and much of it happening on social media,” Gerber said. “By now, interest in Salvo’s work has become almost universal.”

An Evolving Practice

Born Salvatore Mangione in Leonforte, on the island of Sicily, in 1947, Salvo relocated to Turin in 1968, making the city became his adoptive home. He explored paintings early on, before getting involved with Arte Povera (“Poor Art”), the avant-garde movement that emerged in the country in the 1960s, emphasizing conceptual and sculptural approaches. (He is said to have shared a studio with Alighiero Boetti, one of Arte Povera’s key figures.) Salvo’s work was predominantly conceptual until 1973, when he returned to painting.

“Salvo was quoted in an interview with Il Giornale dell’Arte in 1988 saying, ‘I don’t trust artists whose works don’t reflect something of their life and where they come from,’” said Luigi Mazzoleni, the owner of the London- and Turin-based gallery Mazzoleni. “This reflection of his life can be seen throughout his works, with Salvo’s Italian heritage playing a significant role in the development of his landscapes, especially those featuring ruins, with many of his works taking direct inspiration from Old Masters.”

Salvo

Salvo, Tre Colonne (1990). Oil on canvas. © Archivio Salvo. Courtesy of the artist and Gladstone Gallery.

The artist’s extensive travel experience also influenced his painting, particularly his use of light, “which plays an instrumental role in creating serene and contemplative atmospheres, transporting viewer to a specific moment in time,” said Mazzoleni. (The gallery’s founder, Giovanni Mazzoleni, Luigi’s father, was good friends with the artist.)

The most-sought-after Salvo paintings are those dreamy landscapes—a “pretty day scene of sunrise or sunset, with palm trees, beautiful sunshine, in strong yellow or pastel colors,” the London art advisor Federica Bonacasa said.

Art Market Phenomenon

It is difficult to overstate just how obscure Salvo was outside of Italy until recently. The average sale price of his work at auction was under $8,000 in 2003, when only $52,000 of his art was sold on the block.

Last year, the average sale price of his work was more than 10 times higher, at about $85,000, and his auction total was a robust $11.6 million. That is more than 220 times the 2003 sum—and nearly 10 times even the 2022 total.

The core buyers of Salvo’s works are between their mid-30s and mid-50s, and they have traditionally been European and American. However, Mazzoleni said, the artist now also has a strong following among Asian collectors.

“The market is still very focused on paintings from the late 1990s and later, the ones most easily associated with Nicolas Party,” Gerber said. “The most active buyers at the moment are contemporary art collectors. The postwar crowd is a little less visible, but private sales of the most historical paintings by Salvo from the mid-1970s to the ’90s exhibit the same price trajectory.”

three colorful landscape paintings are hung on the walls of a gallery booth at art basel hong kong 2024

Works by Salvo on view at Mazzoleni’s gallery booth at Art Basel Hong Kong 2024. Credits Mark Blower. Courtesy of Mazzoleni.

Galleries’ Effort

While Salvo is now an auction phenomenon, “Salvo mania” began quietly, four years ago, according to Bonacasa. The staggering price surge “is hard to believe for those who know the market,” she said.

The spike in prices could to be attributed to a number of prestigious exhibitions in recent years, such as “Boetti/Salvo” at the Museo d’Arte della Svizzera Italiana in Lugano, Switzerland, in 2017, and Gladstone Gallery’s 2020 solo exhibition in New York, which was credited with reintroducing Salvo to the U.S.

Simone Battisti, a Gladstone partner who works with the Archivio Salvo, noted that the gallery staged one of Salvo’s first shows in the U.S. in 1986, long before the artist’s market beyond Italy had matured. Following the explosion in interest in the artist, in the wake of its New York outing, Gladstone has staged shows at its locations in Rome and Brussels.

Salvos have also alighted at recent big-ticket fairs. Mazzoleni brought several works by the artist to Art Basel Hong Kong, which closed on Saturday. During the First Choice VIP hours on the first day, the gallery sold one Salvo work for $90,000 and another for $240,000. Gladstone, for its part, sold at least three Salvo paintings in Hong Kong at prices from $175,000 to $375,000. At Phillips in Hong Kong last week, a 2009 Salvo made $137,960 (with fees included), almost double its $76,900 high estimate.

Will the momentum continue? Bonacasa advised buyers not to get carried away, especially when bidding at auctions. “I don’t see if it can be sustainable at this level,” she said. “There’s still an appetite, but the market may soften later this year.”

Gerber also urged caution. “The price trajectory we’ve seen recently can obviously not continue forever,” he said. “Salvo’s market, like any great artist’s, will mature and pricing will become more differentiated. But you definitely won’t get important Salvo’s works at bargain prices anymore.”

Follow Artnet News on Facebook:
Want to stay ahead of the art world? Subscribe to our newsletter to get the breaking news, eye-opening interviews, and incisive critical takes that drive the conversation forward.

This Photographer Captured The Mystery Of Prenatal Development, And Here Are His 19 Best Shots

This Photographer Captured The Mystery Of Prenatal Development, And Here Are His 19 Best Shots

Weekly The week’s finest content carefully selected to bring you the best articles directly [once per week]

Daily Our top news, meme articles, and a dose of the best content delivered straight to your inbox. [every day]

Funny The funniest articles of the week that had our audience in stitches [once per week]

Animals A delightful mix of top animal photos, memes, and a sprinkle of pet wellness articles [once per week]

Good News A dose of uplifting news delivered directly to your inbox. Pure positivity guaranteed [once per week]

Best Deals Exclusive discounts, our top shopping articles and ever more impressive deals directly to you [once per week]

Art The most captivating photographs, incredible art pieces, and amusing comics—all in one curated collection of the finest art articles [once per week]

Parenting Stories Discover relatable and unbelievable parenting anecdotes from the daily journey of raising a child [once per week]

Vincent van Gecko: Researchers Dub a Newly-Discovered Reptile After the Artist of ‘Starry Night’

Vincent van Gecko: Researchers Dub a Newly-Discovered Reptile After the Artist of ‘Starry Night’

Cnemaspis vangoghi. Photos by Akshay Khandekar

In the Western Ghats of Tamil Nadu, India, scientists have discovered two new gecko species, and one in particular has inspired an art historical name. The research team, consisting of Akshay Khandekar, Tejas Thackeray, Swapnil Pawar, Ishan Agarwal, Satpal Gangalmale, and Vivek Waghe, landed on the name Cnemaspis vangoghi because the blue coloration evoked Vincent van Gogh’s iconic “Starry Night” (1889).

As a result of sexual dimorphism, only the males resemble the Post-Impressionist painting and are largely blue except for a faded brown collar and upper body. Especially on the specimen’s head, light blue stripes appear to swirl through darker areas, evocative of the way van Gogh painted light emanating from stars and the moon. The females are entirely brown in color with cream, black, and deep sepia spots.

Learn more about Cnemaspis vangoghi, along with another painted gecko called Cnemaspis sathuragiriensisf, named for the Sathuragiri Hills where it was discovered, in the report published on ZooKeys. You may also enjoy other remarkable dispatches from Tamil Nadu, like billions of synchronous fireflires or the epic flamingo migration.

 

Left: Vincent van Gogh, “Starry Night” (1889), oil on canvas, 29 x 36 1/4 inches. Image via Wikimedia Commons. Right: Cnemaspis vangoghi’s colorful patterns

an overview of a newly discovered painted gecko with a blue and gray head and a brownish-gray upper body and neck

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $5 per month. The article Vincent van Gecko: Researchers Dub a Newly-Discovered Reptile After the Artist of ‘Starry Night’ appeared first on Colossal.

Chasing the Golden Hour: Essential gear for capturing stunning sunsets and sunrises

Chasing the Golden Hour: Essential gear for capturing stunning sunsets and sunrises

Sunsets and sunrises offer photographers a magical time to capture breathtaking landscapes bathed in warm hues. But with ever-changing light and potentially challenging conditions, having the right gear can make all the difference. Here’s a breakdown of the essential photography gear I use when I chase those Golden Hour moments.

Remarkable Rocks captured with Sony A7RV with Sony 16-35mm lens
Remarkable rocks captured with Sony A7RV with Sony 16-35mm lens

Camera

While any camera can capture a sunrise or sunset, a DSLR or mirrorless camera offers greater control over settings and image quality. Look for a camera with a good low-light performance, measured by megapixels and sensor size. Higher megapixels generally translate to better image detail, and a larger sensor captures more light, crucial for those pre-dawn or post-dusk hours. A camera that allows for either Manual Mode or Aperture Priority is a good idea too. I personally love the current Sony A7RV.

Format Hitech ND Graduated Filter and adaptor on Sony A7RV
Format Hitech ND Graduated Filter and adaptor on Sony A7RV

Lens

A wide-angle lens is your best friend for capturing expansive landscapes. Ideally, aim for a focal length between 16mm and 35mm on a full-frame camera (or the equivalent on APS-C or other sensor sizes). This allows you to include the vastness of the sky and surrounding scenery. Don’t forget to consider a fast lens (f/2.8 or wider) for capturing sharp images in low-light conditions. If you don’t have a wide-angle something like a 24-70mm will also work quite well. Something like the Sony 16-35mm wide angle or even the Tamron 28-75mm works a treat too.

Cape de Couedic Lighthouse with camera on Peak Design Travel Tripod
Cape de Couedic Lighthouse with camera on Peak Design Travel Tripod

Tripod

A sturdy tripod is essential for capturing sharp photos during sunrise and sunset when shutter speeds tend to be slower due to lower light levels. Even the slightest camera shake can blur your images, ruining the magic of the moment. Consider a lightweight travel tripod if portability is a concern. Something like the Peak Design Travel Tripod is my go-to these days.

Using a remote shutter release minimizes camera shake even further. By remotely triggering the shutter, you eliminate any vibrations caused by pressing the shutter button on the camera body. This is particularly helpful when using longer shutter speeds for silky smooth water effects or capturing star trails during twilight. Alternatively, you can put your camera on a 2-second timer to avoid camera shake.

OKKO ND 6 filter on Tamron 28075mm lens
OKKO ND 6 filter on Tamron 28075mm lens

Neutral Density (ND) Filters

ND filters are optional but can be powerful tools for creative expression during sunrises and sunsets. These filters reduce the amount of light reaching the sensor, allowing you to use slower shutter speeds for creative effects, like blurring clouds or water movement, without overexposing your image. Graduated ND filters are particularly useful for balancing bright skies with darker foreground elements. If you’re after a standard screw-on type ND filter, the OKKO are fabulous. But they are not graduated.

Bonus gear

  • Circular Polarizer Filter: This filter helps reduce glare and reflections on water or glass surfaces, enhancing the vibrancy of colors in your sunrise or sunset scene.
  • Headlamp or flashlight: A headlamp or flashlight comes in handy for navigating in low-light conditions as you reach (or leave) your shooting location.
  • Extra batteries and memory cards: Pack extra batteries and memory cards to ensure you don’t miss a shot due to a dead battery or full card.

Remember, the best gear is the one you have with you. But having the right tools can elevate your sunrise and sunset photography experience, allowing you to capture the breathtaking beauty of these fleeting moments. So, grab your camera, pack your essentials and head out to chase the Golden Hour!