Jan Van Hollenben

I came across this photographer while searching staged photography. I found his work to be really hit or miss. There were certain series I really enjoyed while others were less impressive. Dreams of Flying is my favorite.

http://www.janvonholleben.com/index.php

Raul Montifar:Phillipines http://www.montifar.com/raul/index.html

Eolo Perfido: Italy http://www.eoloperfido.com/

Luther Cavalry: Canada  http://www.lutherphoto.com/HTML/gallery.html

Annie Leibovitz

The Pictures above are by the photographer Annie Leibovitz. She is one of my favorite photographers. She is mostly known for her portraits. From top to bottom: The rolling stones, John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Keith Haring, Elizabeth II and Kirsten Dunst.

Martin Parr on Madonna's use of Sepia toned publicitiy image

Madonna has released an image of herself holding Mercy, the Malawian baby she hopes to adopt. It's in sepia. Why?

Choosing sepia is all to do with trying to make the image look romantic and idealistic. It's sort of a soft version of propaganda. Remember when the colour supplements used to run black-and-white pictures of famine and hardship? Some still do. They do that because they want to make it look more authentic. But it's a fabrication. You can't shoot in sepia, so converting into black and white and then into brown makes everything feel less real.

Read more on the Guardian UK website here.

http://www.paulgrahamarchive.com/index.html

Barry Whittaker is pretty cool, he likes a dog and a desert

I chose this artist to share because he is one of the instructors teaching at the school I am going to study abroad in the fall.

Probably one of the most important things for an artist to have present in his work is humor. Barry Whittaker sums it up well in his statement found in the 'text' portion of his website. He also has a blog.

He uses color very sparingly in his photographs, making them feel very much like every-day images. They are calm while still causing us to feel anxious in certain situations. In the Atmospshere photos there is a sense loss and confusion: where am I? who am I? how did get here? where are we going? wait, am I alone? What are we doing? As for the Precious Monsters and Pets we are frightened of the creatures and concerned for their safety at the same time. With the last three series, Accumulation and Absense, Thrift, and Preservation, we feel greatly overwhelmed and interested in the objects found.