Bucking traditional photographic formalism, Shawn Theodore's Afromythology rebuts Afro Futuristic aesthetic values and serves as a continual affirmation for those who are in no way unsure of their own agency and historical context.

Shawn Theodore

Bucking traditional photographic formalism, Theodore's improvisational style artfully blends Romanticism, commercial appeal, and studio technique to achieve
his trademark style of fine art photography. This personal aesthetic orthodoxy is rooted in what he has coined as ‘Afromythology’ (his not-so-subtle rebuttal to Afrofutristic aesthetic values), and serves as a continual affirmation for those who, while oft-overlooked, are in no way unsure of their own agency within the context of ever-changing historically accurate, and vividly imagined, archives of the Black American traditions that predate Blackness as an American Invention.

Afromythology

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Norma Córdova

00 HeadShot 20220408 01

Growing up as a Catholic Latina, I was very aware of the desirable attributes prescribed to women of my faith, including chastity. At the time, I did not dare to question them out loud. I adhered to them innocently, thinking that this was the way the world operated. In my practice, I photograph women in order to free myself from that conditioning. I explore femininity collaboratively, working with close friends and acquaintances in a full, frank, and free way. In moody, narrative-driven compositions, we explore desire and desirability, and question the myriad expectations of women and how we are portrayed. 


Let It Go

Acacia Johnson

Johnson Headshot

Polaris is a meditation on otherworldly encounters in the Circumpolar Northern landscape. At once an inward and outward exploration, the images reflect my childhood perception of natural world: a realm of wonder, mystery, and sometimes magic.

To me, nature is the source of spiritual well-being, and making
photographs is a way to connect with that source. These images reconstruct a childhood mythology in the boreal Alaskan landscape, where I was raised. The series explores the affinities between Iceland and the Alaskan Arctic; distant regions connected by climate, remoteness, and seismic activity. By traversing the landscape on foot in a receptive state of mind, numinous
experiences reveal themselves. Ice, weather, animals, and celestial phenomena take on significance, and our human scale in geologic time becomes clearer.

These images convey transcendent encounters, each imparting a sense of
wonder in the presence of the unknown. Polaris, the North Star, functions as a metaphor for the presence I feel emanating from these places, the only constant in environments that are otherwise in constant flux.

Polaris

Seif Kousmate

Portrait Seif-1-2

The Dying Soul captures the consequences of climate change and exodus on the Moroccan oases ecosystem. Through intimate documentation, I echo their despair in the face of the environmental and economic hardships that endanger their lands, subsistence, and heritage. Through the power of visual storytelling, I hope to shed light on the rapid deterioration of these ecosystems and contribute to safeguarding efforts, with
the ultimate hope that these efforts will shape environmental and social policy. 

Morocco’s oases have been home to human settlements, agriculture, and important architectural and cultural heritage for centuries, thanks to trans-Saharan trade caravan routes. Today, these oases are home to nearly 2 million inhabitants and contribute to the local and national economic and cultural development. According to official figures, two-thirds of Morocco's 14 million palms have died over the last
century. Climate change bears an economic toll on the oases inhabitants, and endangers their livelihoods. Entire communities have abandoned their lands, migrating to cities with the hopes of a better life.

As a photographer, I asked myself how I can avoid reproducing Orientalist, Eden-like representations of the oasis? How can my work truthfully express the reality of the deterioration that I observed? For this reason, I experiment with new processes and visual narratives to extend the environmental degradation metaphor. The Dying Soul involves external and organic elements (dates, dead skin of palm trees, soil …) that are intimately linked to the spaces I photograph. Hence, contextual layers were progressively and experimentally added to the photos, making the series both documentary and conceptual in scope, taking us back and forth between the reality of the present and the deterioration to come.

The Dying Soul

They’ve stayed. They’ve crossed. They’ve placed a coin under their tongue. 
Composed of 100 works born through a generative system, 0:RIVERS is an exploration of time, life, and death. 

p1xelfool

p1xelfool portrait

They’ve stayed. They’ve crossed. They’ve placed a coin under their tongue. Composed of 100 curated works born through a generative system, 0:RIVERS is an exploration of time, life, and death. The vibrant pixelated scenes created by p1xelfool’s masterful code are infused with his musical influences, as much as they echo works by computational artist Nicolas Sassoon and light artists James Turrell and Dan Flavin. In his practice, colors and their various shapes and forms have the ability to trick the mind and bend time. On his digital canvas, the pixels seem to be alive, almost dancing, before they fade into darkness or generate new pixelated galaxies. 

0:RIVERS

After World War II, LIFE magazine assigned staff photographer W. Eugene Smith a human interest story about a doctor in rural America. They sent him to Kremmling, a small and remote town in northern Colorado. His subject: Dr. Ernest Ceriani. 

At first, Smith observed Dr. Ceriani and earned the trust of the townspeople. He wrote: 'I spent four weeks living with him. I made very few pictures at first. ... I simply faded into the wallpaper and waited.' The resulting story spanned 11 pages in LIFE's September 20, 1948 edition.

Smith's intimate series depicts Dr. Ceriani as a heroic yet weary figure who made house calls, delivered babies, and tended to the young and old alike. Through Smith's lens, Ceriani carries the weight of the world on his shoulders as the only doctor within 400 miles. 

A LIFE compendium later summarized 'Country Doctor' as "an instant classic when published, establishing Smith as a master of the commanding young art form of the photo essay, and solidifying his stature as one of the most passionate and influential photojournalists of the 20th century." As TIME magazine explained in its 2016 compendium '100 Photographs: The Most Influential Images of All Time': "By digging so deeply into his assignment, Smith created a singular, starkly intimate glimpse into the life of a remarkable man. It became not only the most influential photo essay in history but the aspirational template for the form.'"

W. Eugene Smith

AIPAD 7-2

After World War II, LIFE magazine assigned staff photographer W. Eugene Smith a human interest story about a doctor in rural America. They sent him to Kremmling, a small and remote town in northern Colorado. His subject: Dr. Ernest Ceriani. 

At first, Smith observed Dr. Ceriani and earned the trust of the townspeople. He wrote: 'I spent four weeks living with him. I made very few pictures at first. ... I simply faded into the wallpaper and waited.' The resulting story spanned 11 pages in LIFE's September 20, 1948 edition.

Smith's intimate series depicts Dr. Ceriani as a heroic yet weary figure who made house calls, delivered babies, and tended to the young and old alike. Through Smith's lens, he carries the weight of the world on his shoulders as the only doctor within 400 miles. 

A LIFE compendium later summarized 'Country Doctor' as "an instant classic when published, establishing Smith as a master of the commanding young art form of the photo essay, and solidifying his stature as one of the most passionate and influential photojournalists of the 20th century." As TIME magazine explained in its 2016 compendium '100 Photographs: The Most Influential Images of All Time': "By digging so deeply into his assignment, Smith created a singular, starkly intimate glimpse into the life of a remarkable man. It became not only the most influential photo essay in history but the aspirational template for the form.'"

Country Doctor

Reflecting on issues of discrimination in face recognition technology and the lack of representation of non western artworks in GAN generated art, Linda Dounia brings the first large scale AI drop by an African woman. Working off her own works with acrylic painting, Dounia, who has originally caught the attention of the crypto art world as an illustrator, makes a bold move into generative art.
Spannungsbogen is a series of AI generated animations which are outputs of a GAN trained with 2,000 abstract acrylic vignettes hand painted by the artist. These outputs are then arranged following an indexing system that considers form, colour, and texture. 
The work is inspired by the Fremen of Frank Herbert’s Dune, and the relationship of this group of people with the mighty sandworms. In Herbert’s words, spannungsbogen is ‘the self-imposed delay between desire for a thing and the act of reaching out to grasp that thing’. It’s an ode to the invisible creatures in the cracks and crevasses of the world, patiently lying in wait for their turn to freely exist.
Spannungsbogen is a conversation between artist and machine, a dialectical search for meaning between a thinking mind and a feeling one, and an ode to the quietly brewing resistances within us and throughout the universe. 


Linda Dounia

Portrait of Linda Dounia

Reflecting on issues of discrimination in face recognition technology and the lack of representation of non western artworks in GAN generated art, Linda Dounia delivers the first large scale AI drop by an African woman. Working off her own works with acrylic painting, Dounia, who has originally caught the attention of the crypto art world as an illustrator, makes a bold move into generative art.

Spannungsbogen is a series of AI generated animations which are outputs of a GAN trained with 2,000 abstract acrylic vignettes hand painted by the artist. These outputs are then arranged following an indexing system that considers form, colour, and texture. 

This work is inspired by the Fremen of Frank Herbert’s Dune, and the relationship of this group of people with the mighty sandworms. In Herbert’s words, spannungsbogen is ‘the self-imposed delay between desire for a thing and the act of reaching out to grasp that thing’. It’s an ode to the invisible creatures in the cracks and crevasses of the world, patiently lying in wait for their turn to freely exist.

Spannungsbogen is a conversation between artist and machine, a dialectical search for meaning between a thinking mind and a feeling one, and an ode to the quietly brewing resistances within us and throughout the universe. 


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