Month: January 2017

Javier Marin

Javier Marin, “Medusa”, Date Unknown

Javier Marín was born in Uruapan, Michoacan, Mexico in 1962. He studied at San Carlos, the National Academy of Art, in Mexico City and has exhibited widely throughout Mexico with solo exhibitions at the Museo de Arte Contemporaneo, MARCO in Monterrey, and the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City. He has been featured in over thirty solo exhibitions and participated in more than one hundred international exhibitions.

The human as a whole is the center around which Javier Marín’s artwork revolves; he shows living human beings, palpitating, with bodies that present themselves with dignity, proud yet hurt and decomposed. Not fragile, but strengthened individuals. On their skin and flesh they carry the marks and scars
of their own existence: a continuous confrontation of apparent opposites, a de– and re-construction of fragments. His choices of materials as well as his working process, which leaves evident marks on each piece, are substantial elements of the way he conceptualizes his work.

By the Hosta Bed

Photographer Unknown, (By the Hosta Bed)

“For you little gardener and lover of trees, I have only a small gift. Here is set G for Galadriel, but it may stand for garden in your tongue. In this box there is earth from my orchard, and such blessing as Galadriel has still to bestow is upon it. It will not keep you on your road, nor defend you against any peril; but if you keep it and see your home again at last, then perhaps it may reward you.

Though you should find all barren and laid waste, there will be few gardens in Middle-earth that will bloom like your garden, if you sprinkle this earth there. Then you may remember Galadriel, and catch a glimpse far off of Lórien, that you have seen only in our winter. For our spring and our summer are gone by, and they will never be seen on earth again save in memory.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

Robert Schumann: “Little Melodies”

Photographer Unknown, (The Piano Man)

“If, while at the piano, you attempt to form little melodies, that is very well; but if they come into your mind of themselves, when you are not practising, you may be still more pleased; for the internal organ of music is then roused in you. The fingers must do what the head desires; not the contrary.”

― Robert Schumann

Peter Samuels

Animal Photography by Peter Samuels

Photographer Peter Samuels is based in San Francisco. He was a commercial photographer and now photographs woodland creatures and animals.

“…animals have been evolving as the strongest body of my work with lots of press, accolades and a growing amount of fine art print sales. So finally at the start of this year, I called it and owned up to the animal genre. As someone whose prior focus was product, people and animals, deciding to specialize has been ironically liberating, allowing me to hone my skill set and continually strengthen my work.”        – Peter Samuels

Bertrand Russell: “We Think the Grass is Green”

Photographer Unknown, (The Green at the Center)

“We all start from “naive realism,” i.e., the doctrine that things
are what they seem. We think that grass is green, that stones
are hard, and that snow is cold. But physics assures us that the
greenness of grass, the hardness of stones, and the coldness of
snow are not the greenness of grass, the hardness of stones, and
the coldness of snow that we know in our own experience, but
something very different.”

-Bertrand Russell

Mariano Vivanco, “James Franco”

James Franco by Mariano Vivanco, Photo Shoot

Mariano Vivanco is a Peruvian fashion and portrait photographer whose photography was inspired by the works of Steichen and Horst. He moved to London in 2000 to pursue his career as a fashion photographer. Since then he has become a leading editorial phototgrapher, shooting for such magazines as Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Numero Homme, GQ, and Muse Magazine.

His portraits, nudes, and editorial work are often in black and white using the simplicity of light and shading to form examples of pure photography. The above images are taken from Mariano Vivanco”s tribute to Robert Mapplethorpe with the cover story for the Spring/Summer 2012 issue of GQ Style Germany starring actor James Franco.