A favorite from Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Modern Century at MoMA.
Category Archives: photography
Cenotes…
are difficult to photograph.
You walk down a spiral staircase 40 or 50 feet, and walk out in this egg-shaped cave half full of water. The artificial lighting casts shadows on the crevices in the limestone and the stalactites drip into the crystal clear water.
The water is so clear, it’s hard to imagine that the rocks you see so clearly are 30 feet below the surface.
So you take multiple photos, trying to capture the effect.
Once again, you curse yourself for not buying some really expensive, nice camera before you started this long adventure. You think of all the shots you missed over the last few months of traveling. Then you jump in the cold water and swim with the black, eyeless fishies.
Cecilia Paredes’s Faces in the Wallpaper
Art Noveau, 2009 and left, Chrysanthemum, 2009
These photographs by Cecilia Paredes trick the eye by seeming to be floral wallpaper, then encourage a deeper look when you realize a person is there. The Peruvian artist paints and photographs herself to blend into her linen backdrops. Paredes states,
“I wrap, cover or paint my body with the same pattern of the material and ‘re–present’ myself as part of that landscape. Through this act, I am working on the theme of building my own identification with the entourage or part of the world where I live or where I feel I can call home. My bio has been described as nomadic so maybe this is also a need of addressing the process of constant relocation. There is also the factor in my mind that flora as we know it, is coming to be endangered so with all these preoccupations, I think that in these works, aesthetics bind with the anthropologic in order to register fragments of personal and social memory.”
To me, it speaks of women’s decorative role in society, their being told to be quiet and blend in, and here the artist blends with disquieting force.
Nocturne, 2009