Jenny Odell

In this day and age, the ubiquity of satellite imagery has left the realm of science fiction, and has moved into the commonplace. As a child of the nineties, I remember revelling in the fear experienced by characters in movies as they tried to escape the ever seeing eye of Big Brother, how something hundreds of miles away in space can pinpoint a zit on your face, and then pop it with a nuclear weapon. Today, however, with the advent of things like Google Earth, these world images are as part of our human condition as radio, print, or television. In this respect, it also has the potential, like these other media, to used as a venue for artistic expression. This is where the art of Jenny Odell comes in. While simple in composition, the items and places in her collages found on Google Earth range from the odd to the mindlessly mundane, but never lose their visual interest. Each piece reminds us of the enormity of our human biome, and the physical mark that we leave with our love of parking lots, baseball fields, swimming pools, and landfills. However you feel about the implications of these facts, Odell's work forces us to reexamine our world from a different view, which is more than most people can say they've done before their second coffee on a Tuesday morning.

 Baseball Fields

 Basketball Courts

 Landfills (my favorite)

 Empty Parking lots

 Planes

 Ponds

 Stadiums

Swimming Pools

Silos and Water towers

All of these works and more can be found at Jenny Odell's website:

www.jennyodell.com/satellite.html

Abelardo Morell

Photography can seem like one of those mediums that has been explored to its limit. With the dawn of digital technology and phones that can take better photos than most cameras I've ever owned, now everyone's an artist...and a critic. It's harder and harder to impress the world with that perfect composition, and if you want notoriety, it seems like every worthwhile piece has to capture that infinitely deep emotion caught only in the perfect context. The art of Abelardo Morell, a Cuban native, pleasantly turns this idea on its head. Rather than photograph the world directly, he implements the age-old process of camera-obscura into his photography. By creating a pin-hole in the wall of a room, the inverse image of the world outside is projected magically onto the wall inside. If this is confusing, check out his piece below, entitled "Light bulb," which explains the process visually. The juxtaposition of each of the outdoor landscapes with the simple room assemblies he creates are beautiful, understated, and whimsical; and they force the viewer to reevaluate the colors, shapes, and visual quality of the outside world in ways that you'd never imagine. As a side note, currently, Morell's work is on display in National Geographic magazine this month, so if you want some impromptu posters of Morell's work on the cheap, you know where to find them.

The magic of camera obscura: A small slit in the box allows the inverted image of the light bulb to filter in, projecting an image onto the back wall of the box.

All of these works belong to Abelardo Morell, and can be found with more of his work at http://www.abelardomorell.net/

Dust

I guess I've been on a photography kick lately. This series of images, entitled "Dust," was put together by photographers Ujin Lee and Tom Edwards, both known individually for a variety of photography styles-- mostly revolving around capturing heavily-make upped skeletal fashion models. The photographs in "Dust" however, have a murcurial, magnetic quality that draws your eye in to these seemingly placid scenes. The Dust itself to me plays out like an unwanted phantom in each piece, the subtle ghost that passes through the room when no one watches. The sensless lack of design of the dust in the air is welcoming in its visual interest as it is unsettling. As a side note, before Lee and Edwards put together the "Dust" series, they combined the same concept (throw dust in the air, photograph it) to the aformentioned skinny fashion model staple, covering some girls in expensive clothes with pink dust. Needless to say, the effect was not the same.

For more photograph by Ujin Lee, check out his website at http://www.ujinlee.com/



Philip Lorca de Corcia

I'm not usually impressed with most modern photography. I find most photographers focus on dragging unimaginative, uncompelling compositions through a fancy filter and then expect everyone to care. This is especially moot considering the ease of deriving these effects with digital technology that even a I-phone camera can accomplish. That is why I love the work of this next artist, Philip Lorca de Corcia. He's been working in photography since the 1970's, mostly in the North east. His work focuses on people taking part in rather mundane activities: going to the bar, tripping over the sidewalk, going to the store, etc. I know, this has all been done before.  However, de Corcia's work lends such gravity and drama to each of these activities that each moment captured is heart-wrenching, isolating, and moving. While some of his pieces are assembled tableaus, a lot of his photos were taken of regular people on the street (some of which were not very happy about it: see below). I was especially impressed with a series of photos de Corcia took of pole dancers in baroque-esque lighting. I've included one below, but you should check out the others, since they are awesome.

 When de Corcia took this photo of an Orthodox Jew on the street of New York, he was sued by the man, who claimed the piece went against his religion, and shouldn't be used to make money. de Corcia won the suit based on the 1st Amendment protection of artistic freedom, even if the art is sold.