advank + joye

i'm keen on these photos of ambassadors by écal students thomas adank and florian joye. seems like you can tell a lot about a nation from their furniture. see more from this series here.

[photos by thomas adank and florian joye. from the series ambassadeurs.]

bela borsodi • white angel

as far as fashion photos go, i thought these were kind of weird and cool. they are taken by bela borsodi and they're from a spread in the italian version of glamour magazine. bela is represented by art department. you can see more pics here.

[all bela borsodi. from a spread in italian glamour.]

jimmy robert

i really love the way jimmy robert is using photographs (and other stuff) in these installations. he deconstructs how preciously we treat 2-dimensional objects in such a great way. see more of his work here.

[all jimmy robert. top three photos: installation shots. 2005. bottom photo: untitled. 2006.]

michele abeles

there's something curiously uncomfortable about the vision of male sexuality portrayed in these pictures by yale mfa student michele abeless. have a peek at more of her work here.

[all michele abeles. untitled.]

kartograf, whoever you are, marry me

came across these pictures on flickr today. woah. they are all captioned "the weird home of russian photogammetry." i can only hope that this is the same thing as photogrammetry. see the rest of kartograf's photostream here.

photography + plagiarism

take a peek at slate's cover story today. it deals with photography and plagiarism and cites some interesting little case studies on the matter.

these images illustrate the example of artist jeff koons getting sued over the creation of this sculpture from a found photograph in the early '90s. here's what slate's david segal has to say:

"kitsch maestro jeff koons was sued by a photographer who'd taken a snapshot of a couple holding a litter of german shepherd puppies. koons turned the picture, which he'd found on a postcard, into a purposefully tacky sculpture and sold three of them for a total of $367,000. koons claimed in court that his work was a good-natured parody of banal note-card pictures. a panel of appeals court judges saw something else: a copy done in bad faith, primarily to make money. koons settled in 1992 for an undisclosed sum. to the art establishment, the plaintiff was an opportunist who didn't get it—the "it" here being the notion that everything on the planet is potential raw material for art."

so, hmmm, exactly where is the line between art's commercial and social value in contemporary life? (please chime in here, i'd really love to hear what other people have to say on this topic.)

it's interesting to me how the court defines the sculpture strictly as a commodity, ignoring any case for its cultural viability. for me koon's work, while i may not like it, is certainly addressing something that happens in the translation between the photograph and the sculpture. he's questioning that space between vernacular and rarefied objects, 2-dimensions and 3-dimensions, reality and fantasy, popular culture and art to name a few. so he certainly gives us plenty to think about. does anyone still value this?

a big thanks to eric for spotting the article on slate this morning.

ilan rubin gets trashy

just came across these photos in the non-commissioned section of commercial photographer ilan rubin's portfolio and they really struck me. they're pictures of the wasted odds and ends of the photographic materials used to make his "real" work and there's something about them that's wonderfully pretty and so very modernist inspired--both in their photographic self-reflexiveness and their figuration. they are part of a larger portfolio that contains pictures of simple discarded materials like gum wrappers and recycling. ilan is represented by art department. and you can see more of his commercial work here.

[all ilan rubin. top: film leftovers. bottom: job 783.]